Rebirth by Belle Aurora

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It had been six years since my world was turned upside down.
He exposed me to the darker side of life and I could never go back to the person I was.
I had been through more things the average person couldn’t even relate to.

If I had the chance to go back and do things differently though?
Not a chance.

I’d pick him a thousand times. A million times. For eternity.

I guess not much has changed.

My name is Alexa Ballentine, and I am still in love with my stalker.

Rebirth

A bit too long, but otherwise good!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💜🩷💙💚
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏
Character development: ☹️😄😍😮
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration

The heroine: Alexa (a.k.a. Lexi) – she fell in love with the man that stalked her in the first book of this series, Raw. She was the good girl, a former foster kid who got a college degree and became a social worker to help kids like herself. She fell in love with Twitch without knowing much about him, and even after finding out he made his millions in the drug trade and that he had anger management issues, it didn’t deter her. She was in love, and it wasn’t long before she got pregnant. Though her stalker was shot and killed on the day she told him.

The Hero: Twitch (a.k.a. Antonio) – he is a sociopath and a former drug kingpin that had a lot of rage inside him from his terrible childhood. He grew up on the streets after running away from his abusive father at a young age. He went to Juvenile detention for four years after assaulting a police officer. When he had no hope, he blamed the little girl that lived next door when he was young. She had given him hope in a world where none existed, so he planned to get even. He built an empire and stalked her, planning to get to know her and punish her. Though he fell in love, and when everything fell apart, he realized that she was better off without him. When he was shot, he faked his death, all the while planning to come and get his family when it is safe.

The Story: Six year later, Twitch has been stalking Lexi and his son A.J., keeping to the shadows and not showing his face to them to keep them safe. Until he starts to sneak into his son’s room at night to get to know him. When A.J. tells his mom that his father visits him, she thinks he is imagining it. The story flashes back to the intervening six years between the time Twitch was shot and the present. Then it moves forward with Twitch still in hiding while Lexi tries to move forward with her life.

Like the first book, there were things that didn’t make much sense in this book and some plot holes. Twitch is seen arguing with someone towards the beginning of the book about the fact that he had to stay in hiding until it was safe to come back from the grave. Part of that reasoning was because faking his death broke laws, including insurance fraud. But as he stayed in hiding, it became obvious that he visited A.J., and some others as well. Happy and his sister both visited him, so why could he let them know he was alive but not the love of his life?

The storylines were still quite interesting though and I loved most of the characters, including A.J., his nanny Molly, Happy, Nikki and Dave, Julius and his wife Ana, the Māori cousins, Toma and Hemi. I liked how Lexi created a whole family out of all these friends and didn’t just dwell on her loss. This book was pretty different from the first one, but that is to be expected since the two main characters were in love at the beginning of this book and the plot was completely different.

This audiobook was told in multiple points of view via dual narration and was narrated by Celia Stone, Jeremy Gardner and a full cast of narrators. Celia Stone has a soft, feminine voice that is very pleasant. She is expressive and you can’t tell she is reading. Jeremy Gardner has a fairly deep voice and is kind of soft-spoken. I didn’t like him all that much at the beginning of the first book in this series, but as I got used to him, I liked him more and more. I love a full cast of narrators, though I wasn’t too fond of having chapters in Ling’s POV. I didn’t like her in the first book and wasn’t really interested in her story.

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