Reviewer: Tracy Nikan Rebuilt by Scarlett Cole
Series: Preload Series #3
Also in this series: Jordan Reclaimed, Elliott Redeemed
Publisher: Swerve
Publication Date: January 2nd 2018
Genres: Contemporary Romance
Pages: 368
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Series Rating:
Does the past ever really stay in the past?
Nikan can never be complete. He's got a rock group made up of the family he built for himself, more money than he knows what to do with, and a stream of groupies falling over themselves to date him. But none of them are her. The one regret that still plagues him, still taunts him with what he could have had.
Jenny is a survivor. Now running a group home after overcoming life in a cult lead by her manipulative father and watching her mother drink the poison he fed his followers, she fights to keep the light in the eyes of every boy who walks through her doors. Far from simple young love, Nik taught her to trust, showed her how good life could be. Before he formed the band. Before he became a famous rock star. Before he destroyed it all.
A chance meeting after years of no contact shows the connection still blazes between them. But will they have their second chance at love? Or will the weight of their past crush their future together?
If you’ve read any of the other books in the Preload series you know that Nikan grew up in a group home, met his best friends – his family – and they formed a metal band called Preload. Nik’s girlfriend while growing up was Jenny, who also lived in a group home (not the same one). They moved out of the home and Preload started on their journey to stardom. They fell in love and planned on being together forever. That is until Preload went on their first tour and Nik slept with someone else. Jenny was brokenhearted and ended up disappearing before Preload got back from their tour, never to see Nik again.
Jenny ended up going to school and becoming a social worker and worked in a group home. When the opportunity to run the same group home that Nik and the boys had grown up in, she takes it because it would be her first opportunity to be in charge – her dream. She knows there’s a possibility of running into Nik but she doesn’t expect it to happen so quickly and when it happens she’s wasn’t prepared for how the meeting affected her.
Nik never stopped thinking about Jenny. He knows he fucked up all those years ago and has never stopped looking for Jenny or regretting what he did. When he sees Jenny again he tells her exactly how he’s feeling about her and that he wants her back. Jenny wants nothing to do with Nik but he’s persistent and soon Jenny is falling under his spell once again.
This was another great book in the Preload series. This book showed us a different side of Preload than what we’ve seen before and I liked that we got down to the nitty gritty with the boys and their issues. Nik had always been the glue that kept it all together but that was stressful for him and he didn’t want everyone relying on him constantly. He also really didn’t like playing metal even though that’s what the band played. He wanted to make his own music but didn’t want to give up on Preload either. It was a tough thing to be caught in the middle of and hard for Nik to bring it up to the guys and actually have them understand. On top of those issues he was trying to get Jenny back and he was trying to focus solely on her. I felt for this guy. Yes, it was a complete asshole move to sleep with a freaking groupie when he had the love of his life back home, but I think that Cole really showed us how he had changed, grown, matured over the years. I honestly believed that he would never do that again.
Jenny’s situation was crazy. Her father had been a cult leader and had eventually tried to poison his followers – when that happened he made Jenny’s mother go first and she died before the authorities stepped in and saved a lot of lives. She’d arrived in the group home when she was about 13 years old and Nik had been her rock. When he betrayed her, she didn’t know what to do with herself, but it didn’t stop her from making her own dreams come true. She was also dealing with getting letters from her father who was trying to get her to visit him in prison telling her he’d changed (yeah, right). I admired Jenny’s strength with all she was going through with her dad and Nik as well as her dedication to the kids in the homes. I also liked that she didn’t give in to Nik right away. Yes, they ended up together, but she didn’t make it an easy road for him.
Overall the book was a really great one and I can’t wait to read the next book in the series.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Preload Series
I have really been curious about this book here. I just love the sound of this book, and its not very often you see “cult” aspects in a romance.
LoR,
There is talk of the cult in there but the author doesn’t go into too much detail about it. Just enough, I thought. 🙂 I hope you enjoy it, if you read it.