The Finish Line by Kate Stewart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Secrets and lies…I’ve lived the entirety of my life wrapped up in subterfuge for one purpose: revenge.
The Finish Line
Through the years, I lived more as an enigma than a man. For so long, I denied I had a beating heart of my own. Until her.
Until she unearthed the starving vessel inside, forced me to acknowledge it, forced me to understand that I’m capable of bleeding the same as any other. For that, we paid. We’re still paying. Yet, she demands it still, the useless heart of the ruthless thief and shameless villain she fell for. My fear is, I’m no longer that man.
With the lies I’ve told, the life I’ve led, my mistakes are beginning to catch up with me, day by day, one by one. This is my last chance, and I have no intention of losing her again, but as the deception of my past starts to unravel and close in, shedding my humanity may be the only thing that can save us both.
Maybe it’s already too late.
“Meet me at the finish line.”
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙💚❤️💜💖
Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌏🌍
Character development: 😉☺️😍🥰
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Duet Narration
The Hero: Tobias – his father was a schizophrenic and he feared that he would end up the same way. That fear kept him from forming close relationships for a very long time. He showed up after eight months and promised her the world and vowed to earn her. Then he fell asleep before giving her an explanation of why he was away for so long. He has missed her so much and wants nothing more than to get back to where they used to be.
The heroine: Cecelia – she has gone through quite a bit with Tobias in the past and doesn’t want to trust him this time either. They were definitely an enemies to lovers story from the start and even after they got together, he left her and was gone for six years, both of them having other relationships in the interim. They got back together for him to leave again for eight months. Now he says he is here to stay and wants to win her back, but she has a whole new life without him.
The Story: I have to admit, I listened to the first two books about a year and a half ago, and though I remember I really liked both of them, I don’t remember why I didn’t keep going and I don’t remember the story. I have probably read or listed to 500+ books in the interim, so even my reviews of the first two aren’t really bringing much of the story back to me. The reason I haven’t picked this one up sooner even though I own the audiobook is because of that and I didn’t want to re-listen to the first two books which are fairly long. So, I decided to just start with this one and hope that the wrap up of the first two is done well.
It turns out it wasn’t done all that well, so I went back to the last book and read a bunch of reviews with spoilers to get a better idea of all that transpired between these two characters. That is what helped me to remember, I wish the author would have summed it all up better at the start of this book. She actually did, but it took a while.
I liked how the story was a series of flashbacks into Tobias’s past, from his childhood on, though it was made even sadder since it showed how he used to take care of Dominic after his parents died and Dominic died in the last book. It also showed Sean as a child, showed that the two of them were so close from the time they were young boys. Though I must say the scene where Tobias is telling Dom and Sean how to treat women, was a bit odd since Tobias treated Cecelia so badly in the past.
“Don’t disrespect women, period. They’re twice as evolved as most men will ever be. Don’t take your shit out on them, either. It’s a sign of weakness, and they aren’t punching bags. They’re a sanctuary, and you need to figure that out quick.”
Tobias is French and one thing I did not like about the audiobook was the fact that some conversations were in French, where someone will say a sentence in French and Tobias or Cecelia will repeat the sentence in English to translate it for the reader. Why bother? It seems to just make the book and audiobook unnecessarily longer.
If I have said it once, I have said it a hundred times, I may have even said it in my review from the last book in this series, but sometimes when the Hero is being a total jerk or treats the heroine like crap, I just want the heroine to leave him and make it very difficult for him to get her back. I like to see a cruel Hero begging for another chance.
Though Cecelia wasn’t the one that left, Tobias was cruel to her in the last book, and he spends much of this book begging for another chance with her. I love it and Cecilia is a strong heroine in this one, she is no longer the girl who says over and over that she’s had enough, but never does anything about it. In this one she tells him in no uncertain terms that she will put a bullet in him if he hurts her again.
“She never wanted her father’s money. She only wanted his love. That’s all she’s ever asked of any of the men in her life.”
This audiobook was told in multiple points of view via duet narration. It was narrated by Maxine Mitchell and Joe Arden. These two did a fantastic job on this entire series. Each of them has a bunch of different voices for different characters and both of them are very pleasant to listen to. Joe did a terrific French accent, though I am not too fond of a French accent and think Joe’s voice is sexier in with an American accent. I love the fact that it was duet narration, I wish more romance audiobooks were done this way.
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