Title: Wicked Restless
Author: Ginger Scott
Release Date: Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Where To Buy:
Synopsis:
Andrew Harper grew up in a house marked by tragedy. His older brother Owen did his best to shelter him, but you can only be protected from life’s pain for so long. Eventually, you end up just feeling numb…and isolated.
Loneliness was the one constant in Andrew’s life. Until one girl, met by chance in a high school hallway, changed everything. Emma Burke was a mystery and all that was beautiful in this world, the only air Andrew ever wanted to breathe. She took the lonely away, and filled it with hope and color, and Andrew would do anything to keep her safe, happy and whole.
But sometimes, what feels good and right is what ends up hurting us the most. And when Andrew and Emma are faced with an impossible decision, Andrew is tested to see just how far he’s willing to go for the girl who owns his heart.
Cuts are deep.
Scars are left behind.
And revenge beckons.
When Andrew finally gets his chance, in college, five years after his first love broke him completely, he finds out old feelings don’t really disappear just because you say you hate someone. The more he tries to avenge all that he believes he lost, the more he uncovers the real story of what happened years before.
Love is wicked. But a restless heart is never satisfied beating on its own. Can Andrew and Emma make it right before it's too late, or will the ties that bind them now destroy their only chance at a future?
Review:
There comes a time after reading an author you've loved since the very first time you laid eyes on her first book, that you don't need to decide WHY it deserves 5 out of 5 stars. You need to decide just how many of the five-star fabulous facets about the specific book you're reading by that author you simply MUST put into your review. There are exactly THREE authors for me where these times apply. Ginger Scott is one of those three authors and THIS is one of those times.
When I finished "Wicked Restless," I was speechless. I didn't know if I should read it again and make a list of things to talk about. I didn't know just how many different emotions I just put myself through. I had no idea how many of those emotions I could I tell you about without ruining the magic of the story.
When we finished "Wild Reckless," the story of Owen Harper, satiated and massively in love, we didn't know Andrew was getting his own story. However, you could feel it in your GUT that his story NEEDED to be told.
Andrew and Emma meet as teenagers. Andrew is an academic genius attending college while still in high school but, needs to attend the mandatory gym class everybody hates and he has to go to his high school to take the class. Ugh. Square dancing. I remember having to do square dancing in gym. I really did think to myself, "why the heck is she making Andrew square dance?" DUH! So Andrew could finagle himself across from Emma and be her square dancing partner! Yes, of course I smacked myself for that. But that should be a testament to Ginger Scott's writing. Sometimes some of the most common things, which should be obvious, aren't. If there is something Ginger Scott is NOT, it's predictable.
Their romance as teenagers comes to a massive and tragic halt and these two don't come together again until they're both in college. Andrew is attending college on a hockey scholarship and Emma is now Pre-Med. It is NOT a pretty reunion. In fact, it's the exact opposite of pretty. It's ugly and downright nasty.
These two drove me INSANE! I thought that by the time I was finished, I would have completely white hair, and I'd be gumming my food while endlessly rocking in a chair and mumbling "Anbloo-N-Embah, Anbloo-N-Embah." My emotions pulled in every direction and a few new ones. Up, down, this way, that way, here go sideways, throw your leg up behind your head! My gut and my HEART were like two pinballs in a pinball machine but with 100 different bumpers to smack the balls around.
There's a part in this book where Andrew is "away" at "school" because of a decision made on that tragic night where Andrew and Emma parted. And he's writing letters. Tons and tons of letters to Emma. And because of the letters and where I was in the story, and having a tiny speck of an idea where the book was going, I thought of the words "When I stepped out into the bright sunlight...," the song "Stay Gold" by Stevie Wonder began in my head, and I started an ugly cry.
My heart was simply broken for Andrew at that point. I believe that even at his age at this point in the book, that he did what he did for love. Not infatuation, not major like, but epic love.
Did I love Andrew and Emma together? Yeah, I did. I got to a frustrated point. You know, the point when you're actually talking BACK to your book? "Why don't you just TELL him?" "And you, you dope, tell HER what she obviously doesn't know!" But that's part of Ginger Scott's magic. She weaves and spins and twists and finally, you have this beautiful, glorious story of two people who need to be together in order for both of them to be able to breathe.
I typically don't refer to other reviews but in this case, I'm making an exception. The drama in this book, in a review (or two) I read, was described as being "far-fetched." WHAT? Ginger Scott infuses real life situations into every single novel she writes. The style of writing? Well, let's go back to the reference from "The Outsiders" up above.
Back when S.E. Hinton wrote that book, she infused real life gang drama into a tale about love, hate, heartbreak, and young people coming into their own despite all of the obstacles and hurdles. Ginger Scott is a fresh, newer fiction author that infuses real life drama into tales about love, hate, heartbreak and young people coming into their own despite all of the obstacles and hurdles.
If you read "The Outsiders" when you were in school, then you can easily see, as I do, Ginger Scott's stories of both Harper brothers, being on the grades 7-12 English reading list. There may be all of these new genre names NOW but it's still the type of fiction where you walk away with an entire research paper length analyzation in your head. Ginger Scott is writing the new "classic" fiction. One doesn't need to wait until the book is decades old to make it a part of you.
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Ginger Scott is an Amazon-bestselling author of eight young and new adult
romances, including Waiting on the Sidelines, Going Long, Blindness, How
We Deal With Gravity, This Is Falling, You and Everything After, Wild
Reckless and The Girl I Was Before.
A sucker for a good romance, Ginger’s other passion is sports, and she
often blends the two in her stories. (She’s also a sucker for a hot
quarterback, catcher, pitcher, point guard…the list goes on.) Ginger has
been writing and editing for newspapers, magazines and blogs for more than
15 years. She has told the stories of Olympians, politicians, actors,
scientists, cowboys, criminals and towns. For more on her and her work,
When she's not writing, the odds are high that she's somewhere near a
baseball diamond, either watching her son field pop flies like Bryce
Harper or cheering on her favorite baseball team, the Arizona
Diamondbacks. Ginger lives in Arizona and is married to her college
sweetheart whom she met at ASU (fork 'em, Devils).
