Title: Nikan Rebuilt
Series: Preload #3
Author: Scarlett Cole
Release date: January 2, 2018
Cliffhanger:No
Synopsis
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 rockstar. 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?
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Review
Every part of her was mentally screaming
to not let Nik back into her life—
except one. Her heart remembered the reason why
he’d once been her world.
This book is essentially a second chance rockstar romance, but the heroine's background set it apart from many other similar stories in the subgenre. Her childhood years were spent in a cult founded by her psychotic father. A sick man who would ultimately go to prison for urging members to poison themselves-including her own mother. How do you come back from something like that? How do you go on to live a healthy and happy life after witnessing the toxic and damaging things that were a part of her every day life? Somehow she retained her spirit, her optimism, and her desire to help others. She had a warm and loving personality, despite seeing a very ugly side of the world and that's one of the things I liked most about her.
Jenny met Nik as a teen at his group home, and he became her saving grace, her first love, and eventually her ruin. Nik wasn't just the man she pinned her hopes and dreams on for her future. He and his bandmates were her only family. He was her everything, holding her fragile trust and and years worth of pain in his calloused hands. He was the one person she thought would never wound her, and in the end she realized he was the only one with the power to hurt her the most. He betrayed her when he was on the cusp of fame, causing her to disappear from his life for eight lonely years.
Time hadn't eased the regret for either of them. But unlike Jenny, who was forced to see his exploits on the cover of every gossip mag, he would give anything to have the chance to see her face again. To make amends and feel whole once more. Fame hasn't filled the emptiness that clawing at him. When he returns back to his hometown, he's at a crossroads in his life. As the oldest of the group, he's always been the self-sacrificing member. Doing whatever it took to keep his brothers happy and at peace. But at what cost? The realization that he's simply going through the motions for their benefit is a hard truth to swallow. He thought he'd be sorting through his thoughts back home, but every one of them scattered the moment he unexpectedly stood in front of Jenny. The girl he let slip through his fingers.
Jenny rebuilt her life from the ground up in their years apart. She's now a social worker, and trying to make a difference in young lives that mirrored her own at that age. She wants no part of Nik, and forgiveness isn't going to be an easy sell for him. I have to say, I respected her for that. A lot. She didn't set out to punish him, but she made him work for the privilege to be a part of her life again. She made him earn her trust and her heart, as he unequivocally needed to. Their reconnection was gradual, and an exploration of healing. It wasn't immediate, or based on lust.
“I’m building our house for us,
and I don’t even know if you’ll ever move in.
But like the house, we’ve had to strip back what we were to the bones of it,
and now we get to decide what we want to do with that foundation.”
Normally I would have shied away from reading this because of the reason for their separation. Scarlett Cole proved that there's always an exception to the rule with Nikan Rebuilt. She made me a believer in Nik and Jenny's relationship, and the possibility of a brighter, happier future. I think if I had read their break up (and his screw up) in the present tense rather than a recollection of it happening years before, it may have been a different story. Knowing that Nik was genuinely remorseful and humble in his bid to win her back was another big plus.
Overall, this was an excellent addition to the series, and my favorite of the two I've read so far. If you're a fan of rocker romances, or second chance stories with unique elements, this could be the book for you.
Lennon Reborn is the next installment in the Preload series, and will be released in May 2018.
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