Rowena’s review of Facade (Games #2) by Nyrae Dawn.
Can love save them?
After her father commits a crime that shatters her family, eighteen-year-old Delaney Cross is tired of pretending everything is all right. Packing up her car, she sets out to find the people her father hurt. Her search leads her to places she’s never been—and into the arms of Adrian Westfall.
To the outside world, Adrian is a sexy, charming ladies’ man. But his playboy persona is just an act. Secretly his soul is tortured by a memory too painful to share. Only Delaney seems to see through his façade to the real man underneath. And for the first time in his life, Adrian feels he can begin to open up about his past.
Together, Adrian and Delaney share a passionate love they never expected to find. Yet both still harbor their own secrets. When the dark truth is finally revealed, will it bring them closer together—or tear them apart forever?
This is the second book in the Games series by Nyrae Dawn. The first book, Charade is out but I didn’t get a chance to read it before opening up this one. The hero in this book, Adrian Westfall is introduced in Charade and we get his story in Facade.
Adrian’s life is thrown upside down when a car hits his two year old nephew and kills him. Adrian was watching him and he carries the guilt of not having done a better job of watching Ash, or protecting him from the car. In an effort to heal, he runs away and starts a life away from the only family he has. His older sister. He holds himself responsible and well, the guy that ran Ash down but mostly, he’s pissed at himself. He lives his life in a state of unfeeling. He gets high all the time and he blocks out relationships. He doesn’t do them. He doesn’t want any attachments but when Delaney comes into his life, all of that changes.
Delaney Cross’ life is just as messed up as Adrian’s life. She’s dealing with a broken family that’s been broken since her father ran over a little kid, killing him. Her father is in prison (where he belongs), her mother is constantly trying to kill herself and hates her to boot and her brother is pissed off at the world. Her world is unraveling and she’s trying to hold all of the pieces together as best as she can. She wants to move on and find some peace and she thinks that if she can visit the people who’s life her father ruined, she can heal properly and move on with the rest of her life.
She wasn’t expecting to develop feelings for the one person that has every right to hate her and her family.
This book had one of those big secrets that doesn’t come into play until the end and usually I’m not a fan of those kinds of stories but I liked this one. I’m really into the books that are character driven and I think this book did a great job of connecting the reader with the characters in the book. Adrian and Delaney go through so much in this book and it’s emotional and it’s raw and I loved it. I cried, I laughed and I sighed all over the place. I thought this book was completely well written and I’m itching to read the first book because I want more of the same of what I got with this one.
Adrian was such an interesting character because he was broken and he was mean but he wasn’t without hope. Watching as he got closer and closer to Delaney and develop feelings that he wasn’t looking for was a treat because as a reader, I wanted to see him heal and move on from Ash’s accident. The depth of love he had for that little boy broke my heart and made me love him all the more. I didn’t understand the way that he dealt with his grief but everyone grieves differently and more than anything, I wanted him to get better.
Delaney wasn’t too bad herself. I wanted to be mad at her for withholding exactly who she was from Adrian but I couldn’t. She was dealing with the situation as best as she can and she really wanted to tell him but every time she tried, things came up. That’s not to excuse everything but despite waiting so long to come clean, I liked her. I liked her as a person and I liked the person she was trying to be. She was a good person where it counted and I thought she was perfect for Adrian.
This book was a good book and I’m so glad that I picked it up. Kudos to Nyrae Dawn on a job well done.
Grade: 4 out of 5
This book is available from Forever. 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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