Rowena’s review of The Destiny of Violet & Luke (The Coincidence #3) by Jessica Sorensen.
Luke Price’s life has always been about order, control, and acting tough on the outside. For Luke, meaningless relationships are a distraction-a way to tune out the twisted memories of his childhood. He desperately wishes he could forget his past, but it haunts him no matter what he does.
Violet Hayes has had a rough life. When she was young, she was left with no family and the memory of her parents’ unsolved murders. She grew up in foster homes, living with irresponsible parents, drugs, and neglect, and trying to fight the painful memories of the night her parents were taken from her. But it’s hard to forget when she never got closure-and she can’t stop dreaming about what happened that tragic night. To make it through life, she keeps her distance from everyone and never allows herself to feel anything.
Then Violet meets Luke. The two clash instantly, yet they can’t seem to stay away from each other. Although they fight it, they both start to open up and feel things they’ve never felt before. They discover just how similar they are. But they also discover something else: The past always catches up with you . . .
This is the third book in the Coincidence series by Jessica Sorensen and it follows Kayden’s best friend Luke and Callie’s college roommate Violet as they fumble their way to that happily for now. Only because this is a Jessica Sorensen, shit didn’t get resolved in this book because there’s going to be another freaking book in this series where Luke and Violet will hopefully get some resolutions but if I’m honest, I’m not holding out any hope for that since I didn’t feel The Redemption of Kayden and Callie got much resolution but whatever.
Luke Price has always been a mysterious character. In the previous books, he is the guy that is always there for Kayden. He plays a pretty small part in the other books but in those books, we learn things about Luke. Like he’s diabetic but not very many people in his life know that and he’s had a pretty messed up childhood (but we don’t know what). So going into this book, I was glad to finally get that back story that I’ve always craved for Luke. Now that I know what it is, I can’t even imagine what living in his shoes must have been like. Everything that he feels for his Mom is justified because after I found out what the hell he was forced to do for his Mom, it made me hate her and want her to die a slow death. Luke was so young to have to deal with that and knowing what he lived through made me want to beat his Dad up too. Luke is a private man and he keeps to himself. He doesn’t form attachments but when Callie and Seth come into his life, attachments are formed any way and I was glad for him. He needed a support system and I’m glad that he had that in the little family they formed at college.
In this book, we really meet Callie’s roommate Violet. And holy cow, she’s had it pretty bad too. She’s a Foster kid who has dealt with a whole lot of bad things in her short life. She went from foster home to foster home and while her story is pouring out with each page, your heart is put through the wringer. With each new thing that we learn about Violet’s life, my heart went out to her. I can’t imagine having to deal with the loss of both her parents at such a young age let alone dealing with the way that her parents died. It wasn’t enough for her to have to live through that, the rest of her life up until now hasn’t been a cake walk either. She just keeps getting dealt one bad card after another. One of those bad cards was having to live with Amelia the bitch and Amelia’s junior bitch daughter, Jennifer. Those two pissed me off but their interaction with Violet left me exasperated because Jennifer is a bully. Jennifer likes to run her mouth and tell everyone that Violet is a psycho bitch who killed her parents and everyone at school likes to point and laugh at Violet because she’s a psycho killer. How in the world does that make sense? When I was in high school, the kid who was rumored to be a psycho killer was not bullied. He was feared. And rightly so. If he killed someone before, wouldn’t he kill again if someone pissed him off? So why in the world are people bullying Violet when she supposedly killed her parents? How real is that? I don’t buy it. Still, Violet had it rough growing up.
So when she runs into Luke and they strike up a friendship of sorts, I knew that the good stuff was finally coming around for Violet. She was finally going to get a support system and seeing her struggle with trusting Luke and then trying valiantly to not depend on him made for good reading.
Jessica Sorensen does a great job of bringing these two characters together and I was loving the read until we got to the end.
*sigh*
Why? Why oh why can’t we get a full story in just one book? Why do we keep having to wait months for the end of a story? These cliffhanger endings piss me off. There’s no kind of resolution and the reader is left hanging for months on end. I hate, hate, hate them. What I hate most of all? Is that even though I hate these damn endings, I know that when that next book comes out, I’m going to read it but know this, even when I’m reading the next book, I’m going to hate that I’m letting myself be dangled by the end of the stupid “wait months for the next installment” rope.
With all of that said, I still enjoyed this book. I enjoyed getting that look into Luke Price’s background and I enjoyed getting to know Violet so even though I hate the ending, this was still a solid read which is why I gave it a 4.
Grade: 4 out of 5
This book is available from Forever Books. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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