Reality Bites! Let's Get Lost!: Blog Tour Review & Giveaway: Beneath the Burn by Pam Godwin

Beneath the Burn

By: Pam Godwin

Goodreads Link: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17561072-beneath-the-burn

They meet by chance. The timing is wrong.

Three years later, she finds him again, but their separation was poisoned with narcotics and bloodied by enslavement.

Her freedom gambled away, Charlee Grosky escapes the international businessman who held her captive. But his power reaches beyond her protective barriers and threatens everyone she has come to love.

Jay Mayard wears his tortured secrets under his rock god facade. Drugs are his release, even as he seeks to be the man forged of the steel only she can see.

In a celebrity world filled with paparazzi, groupies, and drugs, Jay and Charlee must face their worst fears. When the battle is over, what will be left...Beneath The Burn.

Genre: Romantic/Erotic Thriller

Content warning: Includes graphic rape, sex, anal, bondage, and violence. Age 18+ only.

*ARC provided by author for an honest review*

WARNING! This book is a difficult read. I have read many dark books, but this one just took the darkness to a whole new level. There is rape of every way imaginable, enslavement, violence...well you get the picture. It is not for the faint of heart.

Can a chance meeting, one hour in a lifetime of days, be enough to make an impact on your life? Can it be enough to sustain you through some of the darkest moments of your existence? Charlee holds fast to the belief that sixty minutes spend with a stranger in a tattoo parlor has indeed given her the strength to endure her own version of hell.

What Charlee doesn't realize is that the stranger lives in his own personal hell. The strength she thought she saw in him is non-existent. Or at least it was until he met her. Before that fateful meeting, Jay had been hiding beneath a mask of drugs and meaningless sex with random strangers. But he too felt an unexplainable connection to that girl in the tattoo shop. And after that night, he vows he will reform his life so that he is worthy of her.

That night changed the course of both of their lives.

I will admit, about 30% or so of this book had me feeling very conflicted. The horrors we are exposed to through Charlee's story are gut wrenching. She endures so much pain at the hands of a man who is obsessed with her. All I kept asking myself is how does he get away with the things that he does? How can his reach be so wide that he is untouchable? To know so many witnessed the torture this monster put Charlee through and did NOTHING truly sickened me.

And while a small part of this book reads like a horror story, it is the rest that made me fall in love with book and its characters. Charlee is the true hero here. Her strength is the shining star in a dark sky. Not only does she battle her own demons, but she takes on Jay's as well. She is the driving force that pulls him out of the depths of hell. It is rare that I fall for the heroine in a book, but I definitely fell for Charlee!

But Charlee was not the only one I fell for. Jay is an enigma that can not be ignored. He may be broken with his own demons to battle, but he also brings out the best in Charlee. These two together were explosive (in the best way possible)! It is as if they were made just for one another because they balance each other in ways no one else ever could.

So, if you are looking for a gritty, twisted sort of love story, Beneath the Burn is just what you need! I stress again though to take the warning of this book seriously. It is NOT a light fluffy read.

A woman with a white-blonde pixie haircut backed out of the shop and dammit if he couldn’t stop himself from gawking. She was slender, but not in a bones-pressing-skin kind of way. She had a figure that could only be toned with good nutrition and rigorous activity. Oh yeah, she was built for stamina.

She locked the door, and turned toward him, tipping back her head.

The bluest eyes he’d ever seen stared up at him. They were ringed with navy and glimmered with silver flecks. They were also wide with...fear? No, that couldn’t be it if her smile were anything to go by. Her beautiful face seemed to swallow up the glow of the streetlamps, the passing headlights, the goddamned moon.

“Hi.” Her smile wavered. “You look lost. Can I help?”

Oh Christ, her voice. It was the complete package, like the full-bodied Fsus2 chord humming from the hole in his Martin Acoustic. Gentle, cool, hypnotic—

“You’re lost, right?”

She had no idea. “Just found what I’m looking for.” Smooth, Jay. What the hell was he doing?

Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E9G5GZA

B&N

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/beneath-the-burn-pam-godwin/1116243537?ean=2940148659495

Smashwords

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/342743

Kobo

http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Beneath-the-Burn/book-V0F-txlYQUSVKkL0daNWwg/page1.html?s=pnNlAyf_4USwmLyzjHUmEA&r=1

Pam Godwin lives in Missouri with her husband, their two children, and a foulmouthed parrot. When she ran away, she traveled fourteen countries across five continents, attended three universities, and married the vocalist of her favorite rock band. Now, she resides in her hometown, earning her living as a portfolio research analyst, and living her yearning as a writer.

Java, tobacco, and dark romance novels are her favorite indulgences, and might be considered more unhealthy than her aversion to sleeping, eating meat, and dolls with blinking eyes.