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A review by annettebooksofhopeanddreams
My Stolen Life by Steffanie Holmes
5.0
Steffanie Holmes is the author of my favorite series of all time. I love her writing style, I love how she builds up her stories, how she balances a lot of different elements. I love how she gets the pacing of her stories just right, never too fast and never too slow. So, even though I don't do contemporary and I'm not a huge fan of bully romances, I pre-ordered this book as soon as I could. And once I started reading this morning I almost didn't want to stop.
The pacing of this book is just perfection. We start the story with a bang, setting the atmosphere and creating a certain setting. It's only a small part of the puzzle, but it keeps us on the tips of our toes while we read the first part of the story and get the time to settle in. We get to know the characters, we see their interactions grow more intense and then Holmes starts dropping those adrenaline bombs. With each thrilling new passage the stakes get higher and higher and eventually we get a very nice finale that's satisfying in so many ways I can't even explain it. I had goosebumps all over my body!
What kept me interested throughout the book are all the pieces of the puzzle we slowly get. By being in everyone's mind we get information the other characters haven't and very slowly I started to get ideas about what could be going on. In the beginning it were only breadcrumbs, but the closer we came to the end, the more information we got. And all the unanswered questions are now leaving me with a huge book hangover and a need to countdown to the next book.
But the true stars of this story are of course the characters! We have a main character who doesn't show all her cards, not even to us, the readers, but that's also what makes her so interesting. There's so much backstory still to discover! We've barely scratched the tip of the iceberg! And all the guys also have their own history and pain and grief. In this book we get to see quite a lot of them and yet there's still more than enough left to discover in the next one!
Is the next one out yet? I need it. NOW!
The pacing of this book is just perfection. We start the story with a bang, setting the atmosphere and creating a certain setting. It's only a small part of the puzzle, but it keeps us on the tips of our toes while we read the first part of the story and get the time to settle in. We get to know the characters, we see their interactions grow more intense and then Holmes starts dropping those adrenaline bombs. With each thrilling new passage the stakes get higher and higher and eventually we get a very nice finale that's satisfying in so many ways I can't even explain it. I had goosebumps all over my body!
What kept me interested throughout the book are all the pieces of the puzzle we slowly get. By being in everyone's mind we get information the other characters haven't and very slowly I started to get ideas about what could be going on. In the beginning it were only breadcrumbs, but the closer we came to the end, the more information we got. And all the unanswered questions are now leaving me with a huge book hangover and a need to countdown to the next book.
But the true stars of this story are of course the characters! We have a main character who doesn't show all her cards, not even to us, the readers, but that's also what makes her so interesting. There's so much backstory still to discover! We've barely scratched the tip of the iceberg! And all the guys also have their own history and pain and grief. In this book we get to see quite a lot of them and yet there's still more than enough left to discover in the next one!
Is the next one out yet? I need it. NOW!