Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Spotlight: Unattainable by Madeline Sheehan


BLURB: 
UNATTAINABLE (Undeniable #3)
Warning:
This is not a virtuous and tender love story. It’s chaotic, ruthless, and tragic. This story takes love and kills its innocence, steals away the pure moments, and crushes the hearts of the broken. A story born in childhood, tying one girl to one boy, leads to a destructive path—that hurts more than it doesn’t, that shatters more than it heals—testing the love that binds the two through a lifetime.
Tegen Matthews is the daughter of Dorothy Kelley, a club whore in the Hell’s Horsemen. A plain little girl, Tegen falls into the gritty world of the motorcycle club. When she meets a sweet, caring boy, she embraces the warmth and affection he shows her. Cage West is the son of the president of the Hell’s Horsemen. Tall and blond with deep brown eyes, as he grows up Cage realizes the power of his dimpled smile and smooth drawl. With one chance encounter, Tegen becomes forever tied to Cage. Following is a wayward journey that is filled with regrets, mistakes, and heartache, pulling at the threads that hold them together. Cage and Tegen fight hard but love harder, and in the end, what matters is where the journey takes one girl and one boy, who have been twined with one another since the beginning.
This is Tegen and Cage’s story.
Love doesn’t erase a broken heart, and it sure doesn’t change people. But no matter how old, how flimsy, how frayed the rope of love is, it keeps you tethered to the people you love.

EXCERPT ONE
Once again in town, Dirty pulled off to the side of the road and cut his engine. Toeing his kickstand down, he swung his leg over his bike and stood up straight. While looking around the dark and quiet street he lived on, he reached into his cut and pulled out his smokes. Miles City had been perfect. The polar opposite of New York City and all the nightmares that place held inside of it. He could breathe here most of the time, and ride for hours, just him and the road. A shrill, terror-filled scream followed by the distinctive thump/slap of fist meeting flesh broke the small-town silence, tearing through the empty streets, emptying into the surrounding mountains, and Dirty felt his skin pebble with goose bumps. Another scream, this one garbled, more choked than the first, then another pounding of flesh, and then…silence. Dirty had a well-practiced poker face. Aside from Deuce, no one, not one motherfucker out there, could see through his bullshit. He could throw down with the best of his brothers, beat a motherfucker senseless, kill him without a second thought, his stare as coldhearted as the rest. He’d done deplorable things to a shit ton of people, men and women alike, and never once did he so much as bat a fucking eyelash at his actions. Until he was alone. Because when he was alone he could shake, he could tremble, he could scream and yell, he could punch the walls, he could punch himself. Alone, he could cry. Alone, he could let the fear out and, Jesus fuck, there was so much fear. He lived and breathed fear…every day, every night, all the motherfucking time. It was fear ruling him that had made him what he’d become. That had turned him into the sort of monster he’d most hated. And it was all that fear inside of him, coursing through his veins, pounding in his heart, making him sweat even more fear. It was fear that had him tossing his cigarette aside, fear that had him running down the desolate sidewalk, fear that had him turning down a dimly lit alleyway. It was fear that had him skidding to a stop, taking in the scene in front of him. And it was fear that had him pulling his piece and, with shaking hands, trying to blow a hole straight through someone else’s nightmare, a nightmare that was a fuck of a lot similar to one of his own.

4.5 Star Review by Lisa Kane 

Madeline Sheehan’s characters are like well-known friends to me. To be honest, I don’t think that we would be close friends, but I wouldn’t mind hanging out with them sometime.

Unattainable is actually two stories-Cage and Tegan’s and Ellie and Dirty’s. Cage and Tegan have had a volatile relationship ever since Cage took Tegan’s virginity. To be honest she gave it more than he took it, but once the deed was done, he went back to being the ass he was and let her know she might think she was in love with him, but relationships were not his thing. For years she let that rejection simmer until she tried to turn her love for him into hate. What happens when you give your heart to someone and they don’t accept it? Do you ever get it back?

The first half of my life I’d spent falling in love with him and the second I’d spent trying to fall out of life with him…

Tegan resents the MC and The Horsemen because she believes her mother threw her whole life away for a man that belonged to another woman. She resents her mother having worked for the men that she thinks are cheaters and murderers and liars. She hated her being Jase’s (from the first two books) dirty little open secret. She has lived in San Francisco for years and has been hooking up with ZZ (Deuce's daughter Danny’s ex) for a while-more like a friends with benefits thing than a relationship-at least to her.  He stays on the fringe of the MC, still doing jobs for Deuce. She would rather not hear about any of that. She despises their cheating ways and how they spent more time at the club than with their families. And Deuce, well he is not one of her favorite people.  Despite his asshole ways, I do love me some Deuce West. He is much more stable in this book, and his relationship with Eva is rock solid. They have earned that; they have paid dearly for their happiness. Of course Kami and Cox are just as psycho as ever, and he is definitely the bolt to her nut. 

Back and forth, bob and weave, Tegan and Cage come together but are reluctant to admit that maybe this is more than sex; maybe it has been more for years. Tegan is determined not to become her mother, and Cage is exhausted by their fighting and her running away. What happens when their pasts collide with their present and things explode? Can either of them just forget the other and go back to living a life of self-destruction?

“Wrong,” he growled. “I’ve always had you. Only difference is now, I’m takin’ you.”
“Take it, Teacup,” he said hoarsely. “Be my girl.”

Dirty has always been an enigma in Sheehan’s books. The reader knows there must be quite the story behind all that filth –is he as dirty on the inside as he is on the outside? Ellie was friends with Deuce’s daughter Danny, but cut off those ties when Danny married Ripper and had a child. She would never be owned by a man and would never sacrifice her dreams for his. When she comes home to help care for her dying mother, a violent act throws her in Dirty’s path. These two, who to the casual eye have nothing in common, are drawn to each other. Dirty has suffered unspeakable abuse and has taken back his power by hurting others. I found though, that some of his thoughts and actions sickened me. They were tough passages to read and pushed me out of my comfort zone. Ellie is the calming force to his rage and brings out some semblance of humanness in this broken man. I must admit, I had a disconnect with this character. This book is much darker than the first two and most of that can be attributed to Dirty.  Why does he cover up his face with all that hair, is he hiding from himself?

He’d expected to see the teenage boy he’d been. The face his foster mother had loved, the face she’d made sure to never harm even when his body had been fair game. The face she’d called beautiful. Angelic. That face was gone.

For me, this character had a bit of a twist; the end did not justify the means. It is hard to accept a character that has done so many cruel, intolerable things and have the slate wipe cleaned because they suffered abuse themselves. Life doesn’t work that way, and while I felt my heart break for this man, I never found myself warming up to him as a character.

Sheehan is a masterful writer. She breathes life into characters you want to know, even as the reader fully acknowledges that they would cross the street in real life rather than to confront these people. Her stories are raw and edgy and they make you feel and think. Even though I may not have liked every character in this book, she made sure as a writer I knew most of their thoughts and motivations and that enabled me to either like them or not. I hope her imagination never dries up-the blank page is her palate and she uses all the colors at her disposal to create these works of written art that I have come to love.  
ARC provided in exchange for an honest review


AUTHOR INFO:
Madeline Sheehan, a Social Distortion enthusiast and devoted fan of body art, has been writing books since she was seven years old. She is the author of The Holy Trinity ebook trilogy and Best Selling Undeniable Series. Homegrown in Buffalo, New York, Madeline resides there with her husband and son.

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