laksita 's review for:

No One But You by Brenda Novak

3.0

challenging dark tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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This book was quite emotionally and psychologically challenging to read due to the… abundance of abuse scenes. So if abuse triggers you, please be careful. It zapped a lot of my mental strength reading this. 

So I wouldn’t call this book a romance. The romance between Sadie and Dawson was not exactly the focal point—they didn’t spend a lot of time together where it was just them in a romance bubble. Hell, they didn’t even know that much about each other by the end of the book. 

This book was more like how Sadie was finally able to escape abuse, and how Dawson was the only one bothering to help her escape by any means necessary. And this book was also good at depicting how abuse is a collective effort—not just from the abuser themselves, but also the people around them (friends, family, neighborhood) enabling the abuse inflicted on the victim—and that the stakes were high for the victim when the abuser was an authority figure in the community. 

So yeah. I’ll say the romance was not the focal point of this book.