K.A.Tucker: Courtney Cole's IF YOU STAY: It's Out and It's HOT!

Monday, 11 February 2013

Courtney Cole's IF YOU STAY: It's Out and It's HOT!

I fell in love with Courtney's writing style after reading CONFESSIONS OF AN ALLI CAT. So when I got the chance to read IF YOU STAY over Christmas, I jumped at it. Literally. I grabbed my copy and ran, hissing like a feral animal (okay, so it was on my kindle and no one was going to take it from me but... work with me. You get it.)
IF YOU STAY is very different from CofAC. It's raw, it's dark ... and Cole's writing is equally beautiful. It is written in alternating first-person POVs: Pax - the hot asshole with a dark past (we can't get enough of them, can we?) and Mila - the sweet young woman whom (who? This whole whom vs who still baffles me...) he can't stop thinking about.

I won't say much more, other than to say that I've never read an opening chapter like the one in this book. It is explicit, it is hard, and I felt like I was living it.

Okay... I'll say one more thing. Cole can write a hot scene. Man, can she ever. I need to take lessons from this woman. This book is for mature readers. If you like an edgy, dark new adult romance with tons of conflict, grab your copy NOW!

24-year old Pax Tate is an asshole.
Seriously.
He’s a tattooed, rock-hard bad-boy with a bad attitude to match.
But he’s got his reasons.
His mother died when Pax was seven, leaving a hole in his heart filled with guilt although he doesn’t understand why. What he does know is that he and his dad are left alone and with more issues than they can count.
As Pax grew up, he tried to be the kid his father always wanted; the perfect golden boy, but it didn’t work. His dad couldn’t overcome his grief long enough to notice and Pax couldn’t keep up the impossible perfect façade.
So he slipped far, far from it.
Now, he uses drugs and women to cope with the ugliness, the black void that he doesn’t want to deal with. If he pretends that the emptiness isn’t there, then it isn’t, right?
Wrong.
And it’s never more apparent than when he meets Mila.
Sweet, beautiful Mila Hill is the fresh air to his hardened frown, the beauty to his ugly heart. He doesn’t know how to not hurt her, but he quickly realizes that he’s got to figure it out because he needs her to breathe.
When memories of his mother’s death resurface from where he’s repressed them for so long, Mila is there to catch him when the guilt starts making sense. Mila is the one…the one who can save him from his broken troubled heart; from his issues, from the emptiness.
But only if he can stop being an asshole long enough to allow it.
He knows that. And he’s working on it.
But is that enough to make her stay?