Lead Me Not by A. Meredith Walters Find the Author: Website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads
Published by Simon and Schuster on August 5th 2014
Genres: Romance
Purchase links: Amazon, iTunes
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Source: Purchased
In this dangerously sexy novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Find You in the Dark, a straight-laced college student meets a handsome but enigmatic stranger who lures her into an underground club scene, where she finds it difficult to resist temptation
Aubrey Duncan understands loss. She knows what rock bottom looks like, and she is determined to crawl back up to the top after the sudden death of her younger sister. She blames herself for her part in the tragedy, convinced that she could have done something, anything, to help her.
In her effort to gain redemption, Aubrey starts fresh at Longwood University and facilitates an addiction support group, hoping she can support someone else in the way she failed her sister. But what she doesn’t count on is an all-consuming fascination with group member Maxx Demelo, a gorgeous, blond, blue-eyed enigma who hides dark secrets behind a carefully constructed mask. He only reveals what he wants others to see. But Aubrey glimpses another Maxx hidden below the surface—a Maxx who is drowning in his own personal hell.
As Aubrey and Maxx develop an attraction too intense to ignore, he pulls her into the dark underbelly of the city club scene, where she is torn by her desire to save him and an inexplicable urge to join him in his downward spiral. Worst of all, she is beginning to love everything she should run away from—a man who threatens to ignite in her a fire that could burn her alive…
Book Review: 3 stars
This review is a very hard one for me. Normally, A. Meredith Walters is an author I’m sure can break my heart and mend it again in the end. Her stories are all highly emotional and so heartbreakingly real, that you sometimes wonder if they are not real happenings after all. This is the most important point for me while reading books – to be emotionally involved, even if it breaks my heart.
So, suffice it to say, that I was beyond disappointed to find that I couldn’t be emotionally involved in “Lead me not”. Sure, this was a very realistically written story – most of all Maxx’ parts, it was highly disturbing and fascinating to be in the mind of a drug addict – and you can read between the lines, that A. Meredith Walters obviously has seen such things happen in real life at some point. But all that didn’t make up for the fact, that my heart and emotions simply weren’t involved in this book. I was fascinated by the characters, but didn’t really care about them. Only in the last approx. 15% or so did I suddenly feel for them, but by then it was too late for me.
Like her other book “Find you in the dark”, “Lead me not” doesn’t end with a ‘traditional’ happy ending. Whereas I wanted to know how the story for the two MC’s continued in the “Find you in the dark”-duet, I’m however not interested in reading further about Aubrey and Maxx at this point. And speaking of which, I could draw a lot of parallels from one book to the other actually. They revolve around addiction, mental health, loving someone desperately, hitting rock bottom and making decisions. Only difference is the age of the MC’s (which did not affect their maturity, they really sometimes acted like hormonal teenagers) and the sort of addiction. And for me, I was emotionally invested in one but not the other.
Maybe this is another case of ‘it’s me and not the book’, but I can rate “Lead me not” only with 3 stars and definitely can recommend it to all readers interested in a story so realistic and fascinating. But for me, it didn’t reach my emotions and that’s why I won’t read the sequel for now. This author however, I can’t recommend enough!
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