Give me rockers or give me bikers and I’m in my happy place! Wait, did I just say that out loud…? Well, since the cat is out of the bag, I might as well admit that this book had me from the moment I saw the hot tattooed bald guy on the cover. Extremely well paced, it grips your interest straight away and it never lets go. Great character development, including secondary characters, this is a book that you will start and finish in one sitting.
Layla has had a pretty rotten life – kicked out of home at sixteen, she has always had to rely only on herself and her own survival skills. Never having had a role model for a mother, when Layla found herself as sole guardian of her two younger sisters, she embraced that role wholeheartedly and responsibly, determined to give them the kind of life and care that their own mother never did. But when she applied for a housekeeper position in Malibu, she never expected to not only find a great job, but also a new family for her and her sisters.
Demon’s Wings is a band made up of four guys who have known each other since they were kids and who are like brothers to each other. Sharing a common trailer park upbringing, marred by violence and domestic abuse, these boys have had their share of traumas, making them unique witnesses of each other’s troubled pasts. The only woman they have all loved unconditionally since childhood is Emmy, a girl with her own painful past, a girl they grew protective of, a girl they consider a sister. Except Nik who always saw her as something more and in The Rocker Who Holds Me their story was told. All five of them now live under the same roof, as family, common understanding and unconditional love connecting them and binding them into a network of support they all individually desperately need to warn off the demons from their pasts.
Jesse is the drummer of Demon’s Wings. His dating history up to that point involved one-night-stands and nothing more, never investing himself into getting to know any of the women he bedded.
“Jesse Thornton didn’t care about getting to know women. All he cared about was his band brothers and Emmie. I was a bastard like that, but they were all I knew and all I loved. Nothing else mattered.”
When Layla walks into his life, his reaction to her is instinctive, uncontrollable, primal. He knows he should not pursue her but his every thought, his every dream is consumed by desire for her.
“I… want her.”
Layla is drawn to the sexy bald rocker with every fiber of her body, mesmerised by his eyes and ignited by his body. When they finally give in to their attraction, you can feel the spark between them turning into fireworks, those hot lovin’ scenes setting the pages on fire. But while their bodies quickly learn how to please each other, trusting one another is something they have to work on, old secrets trying to pull them apart and their own insecurities making things worse.
“I had secretly been looking for someone like her my whole life. Someone who could deal with me without giving up on me. Someone who would love me even when I was a completely unlovable bastard.”
Ms Browning definitely has a magic touch when it comes to creating sizzling chemistry between the characters. The story is well-rounded, gripping, engaging. I would have loved even more intensity between Layla and Jesse, more time spent on them getting to know each other, falling in love, but by giving us a colourful backdrop of carefully developed secondary characters, and their interactions with the main characters, Jesse and Layla’s story felt complete. While this might have been their story, the other characters in the series are given equal play time, advancing their own plotlines, and making us hungry for more.
I loved this story, could not put it down and had it not been for the frequent and very distracting editing errors throughout the manuscript, I would have adored it.
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The Rocker - Recommended Reading Order
(standalone stories with interconnected characters)
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Thanks for having me today!
An absolute pleasure!! I now need Drake and Lana’s story ASAP!!!! :)
Your review was fantastic and I’m so in love with these characters. I agree with you on wanting more Jesse & Lana but I LOVED how all the characters were there and you stayed connected to them. I can’t wait for Drake’s story and hope that maybe there will be a Shane story!