Landon & Shay (part two) - Brittainy C. Cherry
Once upon a time, I fell in love with a boy.
A beautiful, broken boy who had his own world of struggles.
People warned me against our love, but I didn't listen.
We looked weak, young, and foolish.
Dangerously in love.
We didn't care.
In order to keep our hearts protected from the opinions of others, we became each other’s secret.
We shared stolen moments. Tender touches. Secretive embraces.
It was our twisted love story, and it worked for us up until our lives changed forever.
The boy I loved became Hollywood’s newest golden boy.
His career blossomed as mine stalled.
He found massive success as I discovered multiple failures.
He made something of himself, while my dreams never came true.
We moved into different realms where our pieces no longer fit together.
In the fairy tales, love conquered all.
In reality, love was the main reason empires began to fall.
I always knew Landon belonged in my story.
He was my beginning, middle, and end.
The only problem? I wasn’t certain I still belonged in his.
I have so many thoughts on this and I just had to take a little while to process it and I just don't know if I'm going to do justice. I'm going to start by telling you that while I loved this duet, I didn't love part two as much as part one and as much as I wanted to. Part one leaves us kind of with a cliff hanger of Landon going to L.A. and Shay staying behind. We know that Landon's career will take off and Shay's will be kind of stagnate and not really go anywhere.
I didn't love the way Landon and Shay "break up" in this book (that's not a spoiler, this is basically the trope every book by Brittainy C. Cherry goes, so we know it's coming), and frankly, while Landon makes mistakes, I really hate how Shay handles it. Especially know how Landon operates when he's in a depression valley, I'm not sure how she misses all of the tell tale signs of it. Secondly, there are so many unfinished stories (What happens to Shay's dad? What about their friends? I'm assuming there was a fallout with Tracey or something?) and it just left me waiting for more to happen. Also, for all of the buildup of Landon talking about how hard it is in the spotlight, even for those around him, I expected more of that for Shay. Though she does experience it, it's not like I thought it would be. Third, this was rushed. I felt like a lot of care was spent in part one in the set up, I felt like the beginning of this one was promising, but then... it's a race to the end. If we didn't get an epilogue this would have been a total let down for me. I mean, the epilogue is good but I would have liked even MORE of one.
Oh! My other issue?? We know what happens with Landon over those ten years (kind of) and we know what happens with Shay, but they don't know what happened to each other. There wasn't much of a discussion and what they did have was fairly brief because neither wanted to really acknowledge how they each disappointed and let down the other person. For me it was more Shay than Landon (who clearly did a lot of work dealing with mental illness and I love that so much about this duet), because she was avoiding everything throughout.
I also felt like this entire duet's story line was too similar to her other book, The Fire Between High & Lo, and you know I loved that book. Maybe that's why I felt let down, it was too similar and I was kind of bummed out.
I have to give a massive thank you to SocialButterfly PR and of course Brittainy C. Cherry for making these ARC's available for review. I'm a massive fan of Brittainy and she has a special spot on my shelf because it is well deserved. All thoughts and opinions are my own and this post contains affiliate links. If you read this duet, I want to know what you think!
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