The Wildflower by J.L. Beck

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Lies. Betrayal. Loss. 

They’re all I know, see, and feel.
I don’t know what is true, or a lie. I don’t know who to believe or who what is real.
Broken and grieving I find refuge in an unlikely foe.
A man who claims to be my brother, who vows to protect me, and destroy those that hurt me.
But not even he can’t protect me from the nightmare that is Drew Marshall.
Deranged. Psychotic. Immoral.
He broke my heart, and publicly humiliated me. Leaving me shattered and broken when I needed him most.
I should hate him, and I do, but a sick twisted part of me craves him as well.
The harder I fight to escape him, the deeper he digs his claws into me.
They say the truth will set you free, but ours didn’t do that.
It locked us inside the cage, and tossed away the key.

The Wildflower

Every bit as good as I had hoped!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙🖤💚❤️💖
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘📔
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍🌎
Character development: 😔🤓😘😄🥰

The heroine: Maybel “Bel” Jacobs – she thought Drew felt something for her, she certainly had felt something for him. She has social anxiety and a mother that is sick with cancer. She attends Oakmount University where Drew is the star of the football team and big man on campus. She was recently betrayed, and her life was turned upside down in ways she never could have imagined.

The Hero: Andrew “Drew” Marshall – he is a wealthy kid from a starchy uptight family. He hates his abusive father but can’t get out from under his thumb. His father recently gave him some news that he couldn’t come to terms with. His family also is making him marry a girl he doesn’t want or like. His father gave him that news at the same time he announced the engagement to all his business associates and friends. The girl is the daughter of some guy his father plans to work with.

The Story: Drew was stuck. In order to protect Bel and his mother, he had to go along with what his father wanted. His father wasn’t just abusive, he nearly killed Drew. Even though Drew was an adult and a college football player no less, he held all the cards. He held Drew’s mothers well being in his hands and he was always guarded, so even when Drew did stand up to him, he had his guards hold Drew back and he even had them get their punches in. I couldn’t wait for this book to come out because I wanted to see his father get his due.

I was a bit upset at first when I saw that this book was over 500 pages, since I didn’t want to wait till the end for things to happen. So many secrets came out at the end of the last book, there was just a ton to unwrap in this book. I love that this book takes up directly after the events of the first book. I was hungry to get right back into this story and find out everything about some of the revelations, though they were slow to come. I didn’t like that at first, but it certainly kept things interesting.

I also wanted to get to know Drew’s friends a bit better in this book, and that is something we got to do, especially Sebastian. The character development is terrific in this book. Drew is psychotic and somewhat deviant, but Bel is perfect for him in so many ways. She is just as twisted as he is at times, and we really see that in this book.

“All I want is to be loved, but I don’t want just any type of love. I want the kind that awakens the soul, that’s obsessive, and scary, and filled with fire that you feel in every cell of your body.”

Drew’s father made a great villain in this book, I didn’t think he could get much worse than he was in the first book, but he sunk to new lows in this one. There were parts that were downright painful to read. I hated him as much as Drew did. He wasn’t one of those villains you love to hate, he was just one you really wanted to see get a bullet to the head (or something much more painful). I stayed up all night reading this one, and I can’t wait for Sebastian’s story.

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