Book Title: Forever Innocent
Author: Deanna Roy
Published Date: October 1st, 2013
Publisher: Casey Shay Press
Genre: NA/Romance/Contemporary
Series: Book 1
Book Link: Goodreads
Purchase Links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Synopsis from Goodreads:
"Our baby died on prom night, and nothing was ever the same again."
Corabelle doesn’t feel like any of the other college girls. On what should have been one of the happiest nights of her life, she and her boyfriend Gavin watched a nurse disconnect the ventilator from their seven-day-old baby. During the funeral two days later, Gavin walked out and never returned.
Since then, her life has been a spiral of disasters. The only thing that has helped is her ability to black out whenever the pain gets too hard to bear, a habit that has become an addiction.
When Gavin shows up in her astronomy class four years later, he is hell-bent on getting her back, insisting she forgive him. Corabelle knows she can’t resist the touch that fills the empty ache that has haunted her since he left. But if he learns what she has done, if he follows the trail back through her past, her secrets will destroy their love completely. And once again, she’ll lose the only person who always believed she was innocent.
Corabelle doesn’t feel like any of the other college girls. On what should have been one of the happiest nights of her life, she and her boyfriend Gavin watched a nurse disconnect the ventilator from their seven-day-old baby. During the funeral two days later, Gavin walked out and never returned.
Since then, her life has been a spiral of disasters. The only thing that has helped is her ability to black out whenever the pain gets too hard to bear, a habit that has become an addiction.
When Gavin shows up in her astronomy class four years later, he is hell-bent on getting her back, insisting she forgive him. Corabelle knows she can’t resist the touch that fills the empty ache that has haunted her since he left. But if he learns what she has done, if he follows the trail back through her past, her secrets will destroy their love completely. And once again, she’ll lose the only person who always believed she was innocent.
Disclaimer: I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
Review:
This is a book that I will have to divide into parts that I really loved and parts that I really didn't like much. The crazy part is those break down into practically half and half. Half of the book I loved and half of the book I really didn't like.This book took me on a roller coaster. Thankfully I love roller coasters, but this was a brutal ride.
Let's start with what I did love about the book. I loved the backstory of how long Gavin and Corabelle had known each other and how they had found themselves preparing to be teen parents to a baby.
Reading about Finn's short life just about unraveled me. It was heartbreaking and I loved knowing that the author had taken things from her personal life and threaded it into the book.Since the author had experienced the loss of a baby,she was able to bring a different tone to this book.A more personal and emotional tone.
On a personal note, when the book first started to mention that Finn had had something wrong with his heart, I got really curious. I was born with heart problems myself so I was curious to see if the author would handle the defect correctly or not. Well the options Gavin and Corabelle were given were correct but the statement that "heart defects are mostly genetic" drove me bananas because the truth is 95% of heart defects are considered to be flukes or random incidences. So that showed a lack of research on the author's part and that really disappointed me.
I loved that Corabelle let Jenny into her life more and more as the book progressed. Seeing how closed off Corabelle had been at the beginning of the book, it showed a lot of emotional growth in Corabelle that she was willing to let Jenny in on the part of her life that included Finn.
Corabelle's own journey of grief was amazing and beautiful to watch.She would always miss Finn and love him and wish he was here with her, but she was slowly coming out of the haze of grief. Something that had taken her four long years to do.She had spent 4 years pushing people away because she was afraid that she would get too close,too attached and then the person would leave or even die like Finn did.
Now onto the parts that I didn't love so much. Corabelle and Gavin jumped into the sack way too soon. They had each changed in those 4 years they were apart and there wasn't even a discussion about that. It was much too soon and that drove me nuts. Gavin's behavior was also too crazy. He needed to back off when she told him to. Texting and calling and stopping by her home AND her place of work was not only being disrespectful, it was stalking. For crying out loud Gavin, leave her alone. I was absolutely livid that he wasn't being respectful.
What was worse, was that, despite her friends' efforts to do what Corabelle wanted, the minute he finally got to see her again he started in with the "I know we can make it work" crap. Well I was just pissed off that he could be so sure of that when he didn't know what she had done in those past 4 years and he didn't even have the balls to be honest with her about what had done.
This book will be getting 3.5 stars. Parts of it I really loved, but the parts of it that included Gavin's pushy-ness and Corabelle's lack of restraint are forcing me to lower the rating.I am so glad that the book featured a baby with a heart defect, as there aren't that many books that do. I just wish the one fact that had been in the book was correct.
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