Review: Charade by Nyrae Dawn

Charade by Nyrae Dawn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm giving this book 5 stars for a number of reasons.

It's real and touching in many ways. There are in fact girls that I know that would do like Cheyenne and hire someone to pretend to be their boyfriend for revenge, although not likely with the same heartbreaking results. Also, the simple fact that love is love and we all yearn for it and these characters show it so freakin' well. Their losses and pasts lead not to weak characters but to rather strong ones, who grow and develop nicely through the book, although at times they act a little phsycik(?).

All of that adds up to making it a four star book, because certainly there are the drawbacks that make it down a bit, like how, even out of desperate situations, there was nothing that really brought the characters together. And personally, I don't rate so much on the romance itself, as to how well it was portrayed.

That final star is gained by two parts of the book at the beginning and end. The first is a quote, the first paragraph of the second chapter where Colt talks about being with his dying mother.

Dying people have a distinct smell to them. Even people who have months to go. It's an almost old smell that clings to their skin. Which is gross as hell, but when it's someone you love, you don't think about how disgusting it is, but how much it fucking sucks.

I have read plenty of books where a character of importance (in some way at least) is dying from some disease slowly and painfully, even though you only often get the last portion of their life, the worst one. And the way these are portrayed very in how well they are. I used to think myself that it was a fact that death sucked so every story that made that true was a good one. That is not fact. There are small things that make the slowly dying characters realistic. Like how the people around them try to keep them going and give up their own wishes for that single person, or how they all ask for something to go with them. Those and many other things are shown very well in this story...

I am a cryer, when I read well written emotional books/scenes. If a book can make me cry for at least 3 pages or I have to stop for a second because there are too many tears to see through, that makes the book an automatic 5 star.

OH THE FEELS!!!!!

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