3 out of 4 stars
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Heartaches 2 by HM Irwing is an action-packed adult romance with jaw-dropping surprises, featuring Anna a young, athletic, daredevil type individual who is passionately in love with Rafe who is equally attractive, rugged and fearless. Both Anna and Rafe are affected by similar bitter, bizarre, and ensnaring circumstances at the hands of the Prestons. The experience transforms both formerly passive, shy and good-natured beings into revengeful, reckless and predatory fiends towards their aggressors. Both find great solace in their mutual implacable love that propels most of their actions as they continue to face riveting emotional and physical circumstances that threaten to rip them apart.
Anna and Rafe’s gay friend Pat is easily recognizable, credible, and an endearing persona. Pat stands amazed at Anna’s Amazonian tendencies. As Anna and Rafe attempt to move ahead they are confronted with past toxic, relationships that creep back to stifle their growth. When this occurs at Anna’s visit to her mom, her recognition of the toxicity of Yasmin’s friendship is the first step of her breaking out of the stranglehold she allowed others to have over her.
This small victory does not remove the nightmarish life that she still exists in but helps bolster her confidence to deal with some of her tormentors. A dominant motif in this narrative is nightmares that haunt the protagonists at nights. There are the days when their nightmares turn into reality, and the reader is enveloped in the gut-wrenching anguish of the drama.
I awarded this romance 3 out of 4 stars, as Heartaches 2 is a page-turner revealing a bevy of both lovable and despicable men and women. Irwing snatches readers into the family saga full of deceit, rape, sex and fighting among the Preston’s, the Dayton’s and Cash’s and eventually release them with a cliff-hanger. I refrained from awarding this romance a four-star rating as there were a few typographical errors.
Irwing is a skilful romance writer who pens an easy flowing narrative that occasionally borders on poetry as demonstrated in the following lines,“ Outside the sweltering heat persisted, and inside a well of molten lave was on the brink of eruption”(pg. 89). However, I loathed the abundant use of obscene language in this romance; the four-letter F-word is replete as an adjective or verb for almost every type of emotion ranging from ecstasy to disgust. Nevertheless, I was swept up in the action of this romance and anxious to discover what other madness was about to unfold.
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Heartaches 2
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