Fighting Attraction

by Sarah Castille

There has been something about the Redemption series that up until now has made each and every book compulsory reading, so when this one hit the screen I was absolutely delighted that I was going to be able to spend a little more time totally absorbed in a world that I have come to feel almost part of. Each and every book of this series has been a study of grit and determination and I expected Jack and Penny to be exactly the same…but was it?

Well this is the story of Jack Caldwell, aka Rampage and Penny and it wasn’t at all what I had anticipated.

Both have needs that don’t exactly fall into the “vanilla” camp, Penny has tendencies that she seems to find issue with accepting, why I wasn’t exactly sure, yes her desires weren’t exactly what many people would consider “normal” but they were what she needed and right up until she met Jack, her desires had been primarily unfulfilled…but with Jack, oh boy she has a man that is the ying to her yang and matching her masochism with his sadistic desires is a marriage made in heaven.

Jack found his urge to inflict pain during intimacy something that almost ran at odds with the fact that he had be brought up with good old southern values, values that clearly state that a real man should never lay a finger on a woman, and while those are values that he holds dear …that is outside the bedroom because in the throws’ of desire those values couldn’t be further from the truth, his need to inflict pain is exactly what makes him tick.

I thought the author hit the nail on the head portraying the internal struggle that Jack’s professional and personal persona brought to his character as a whole, he tried, I honestly believe that, to almost reign in the sadistic desires that were lurking inside of him and because of that that I was hoping that with Penny he would at last find a peace that his heart seemed to be searching for.

Self harm has been Penny’s coping mechanism for too long, her way of dealing with a past that is so painful that it has left her with self-esteem issues. But could a man like Jack be the key to unlocking a part of her heart and her life that she never thought she would have the opportunity to share?

They both really struggled with the fact that they needed a different level of physicality, their desires were only ever fully satisfied by being able to absorb themselves in a world where they intimacy included a consensual level of pain and I have to say that I found that to be a beautiful thing, not the pain no, but the fact as individuals they were able to offer each other what was almost a vital missing piece to who they really were. With each other they didn’t need to pretend and that in my opinion was priceless for each of them.

I loved this book, I have loved them all but this one spoke to me on a different level. It took two characters that on the surface were different but that once you looked under the top layer, they were so similar.

The level of understanding and acceptance that they were able to give to each other allowed them to almost grow into their own skin, they could finally fill every last piece of who they were and by doing that they were able to grow not only as a coupe but individually, they book gave prominence to the fact that we are all different and that there is someone out there for us all and that one we have the right person in our lives, anything is possible.

Acceptance and understanding for them both was all it took for them to finally be themselves and to be happy. I loved the touches of humour that the author interspersed throughout the story and above it all I loved the fact that these were two people that I could understand, they had heart and that was wonderful to read.