REVEALING US

TITLE: REVEALING US

AUTHOR: LISA RENEE JONES

Pages: 320

Date: 10/09/2013

Grade: 4.5

Details: no. 3 Inside Out

            ARC received from the author

Own / Kindle

The Blurb:

“No in-between…

He has become her life, her heart, her very soul. But he is dark and damaged, and his secrets are many. Sara will risk everything for him. He, in turn, will dare to expose his deepest needs, his most erotic desires. And in the fury of passion he will reveal all that torments him, all that he can never escape. To love him, Sara must embrace the darkest part of him, and become his shelter in a storm that will be his ultimate salvation.”

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Before I start my review let me just say that this book is part of a series, and should not be read out of order if you want to fully enjoy it. See below for a graphic of the full series, including reading order, which I copied from Lisa Renee Jones’ Facebook page.

“There is no right way, remember? There’s only our way.”

 And so we reach the final part of Sara and Chris’ tempestuous journey. With the mystery that was Rebecca’s disappearance solved and all of Sara’s past and secrets out in the open the time has arrived to deal with the darkness that still hides deep inside the man she loves. And because the root of Chris’ issues lies in Paris, that is where Sara travels with him.

Sara has come through a lot over the past two books but is slowly starting to accept and trust that Chris is the man she loves and exactly what she needs in her life.

“He has always been the answer to the question of what was missing from my life, even before I met him.”

However, that doesn’t mean the rest of the journey is going to be smooth sailing for her. Almost everything and everybody she encounters after arriving in Paris seems to conspire to make her life hard and tear her away from Chris. It starts with her passport being stolen while she’s still in the airport and goes downhill from there when she meets people from Chris’ past. Matters aren’t helped by the fact that she doesn’t speak a word of French and Chris is still holding back on sharing his secrets with her. And there is the still unsolved mystery of Ella’s disappearance. But, whenever those worries slip into the background everything between her and Chris is just about perfect.

“And the answer to your question is, I’m perfect. You’re here.”

With everything that is going on around her, and all the unanswered questions she still faces, Sara’s insecurities are never far from the surface. But whenever they threaten to overpower her and make her doubt the future she’s seen glimpses of but still can’t bring herself to fully believe in, Chris is there to reassure her.

“It’s just you and me, baby, and I’m not like anyone else who’s ever been in your life. There’s nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed of with me, ever. You can embrace who you really are, and we can be whoever we want to be together.”

And Sara truly believes that Chris is nothing like anybody else in her life, past or present. She won’t be able to fully believe in a future for the two of them though, until Chris decides that she is the one he can share his secrets with; until he too realises that together they can leave the past where it belongs and start facing the future. She needs Chris to believe his own words when he says:

“We attack the problems. They don’t attack us. And we do it together.”

Chris and Sara may have faced troubled times and still be up against deep rooted issues on Chris’ part and lingering insecurities on Sara’s, but they are slowly coming to the conclusion that together they may be able to face it all and come to their own happy ending.

“There is no right way, remember? There’s only our way.”

It is a nice added bonus that although we found out what happened to Rebecca at the end of “Being Me”, we do get some more of her journal in this book. This appears to bring Rebecca’s story full circle, although I guess we can never be completely sure that is actually the case.

And hot, oh my, are Sara and Chris hot together. I love the way the intimacy between these two characters is described on these pages. The need they feel for each other is palatable, the way their bodies react to each other is, well, stimulating is the only polite word I can think of. While Chris is trying to put his past need for pain behind him, Sara is carefully discovering the pleasures of submitting in the bedroom to this man who knows exactly how to give her what she needs and wants, even if it scares her almost as much as it excites her.

“That’s part of the high, Sara. The adrenaline rushing through your body. The unknown soon to be discovered.”

What we have here is an adrenaline filled love story; an exhilarating combination of thrills and passion, danger and love, dark and light. This is the sort of book you’ll want to finish as soon as you’ve started it because the constant need to know what is happening and why is as demanding as the need to find out if Chris and Sara will find a way to make a future together. This is an intoxicating emotional roller-coaster of a book that will keep you hooked.

But…

By now it may be clear that I loved this book. Which begs the question why I rated it 4.5 rather than 5 stars. All I can say – without resorting to spoilers - is that the final book in a trilogy should not end on a massive cliff-hanger. I don’t mind a teaser, and I actually quite like it when some questions aren’t completely answered, leaving some of the resolution up to the reader’s imagination. I do however have an issue with the way this book ended. I am, by now, a big enough fan of Lisa Renee Jones to want to read whatever she may publish next. And I can’t imagine being the only one of her readers facing this addiction. I don’t like that she feels the need to try and tie me to a next book or series by throwing an unexpected and unwelcome cliff-hanger at me. Do not get me wrong, I will read that next book. That, however, does not mean that I like the way in which I will have been brought to it. This is, of course, a very personal dislike and does not reflect on the quality of the writing. In fact, I’m sure there are a lot of readers out there who had the opposite reaction when they saw the cliff-hanger, exactly because it does promise us more to 
come.