Love is unstoppable...
At twenty-eight, Matt Sky has the perfect life. He has a beautiful girlfriend, a massive inheritance, and four national bestsellers -- all penned under his airtight alias, M. Pierce.
At twenty-seven, Hannah Catalano has a train wreck. Her boyfriend is a deadbeat and her job is abysmal.
Matt and Hannah meet online as writing partners. Their relationship is safe, anonymous, and innocent...
Until Matt sees a picture of Hannah.Hannah's picture sparks an attraction Matt is powerless to ignore. When circumstance brings Matt and Hannah together, the strangers begin a love story that's passionate, poignant, unforgettable, and unstoppable.
At twenty-eight, Matt Sky has the perfect life. He has a beautiful girlfriend, a massive inheritance, and four national bestsellers -- all penned under his airtight alias, M. Pierce.
At twenty-seven, Hannah Catalano has a train wreck. Her boyfriend is a deadbeat and her job is abysmal.
Matt and Hannah meet online as writing partners. Their relationship is safe, anonymous, and innocent...
Until Matt sees a picture of Hannah.Hannah's picture sparks an attraction Matt is powerless to ignore. When circumstance brings Matt and Hannah together, the strangers begin a love story that's passionate, poignant, unforgettable, and unstoppable.
ebook, 270 pages
Published September 6th 2013
Source: Purchased
Not recommended for the faint of heart or underaged!
Our Review---
CONTAINS SPOILERS because I don't know how else to do this...I really don't think we did too bad.
I'm further out than 24 hours at this point, and I still can't get it out of my brain. At all. I go to sleep thinking about it. I wake up and think about it. If I dreamed at all, I probably would be dreaming about it. We are trying so hard to figure out what could possibly go down in the next installment, and try to process everything that happened in this one!
I am not sure what, exactly, I feel for Matt. Part of me wants to throttle him for treating Hannah and Bethany the way he did...part of me understood--it was not excusable but understandable. I didn't like myself for empathizing with him...I got over it. I sort of love it when a writer gets me all twisted up and makes me question my reactions and why I think what I think. Then I hate it because WHY AM I QUESTIONING what I think? And them I'm like..screw it; this shit is good so I'm just going to go with it.
You know how I feel about cheating. And again how I feel about myself when I root for the character anyways! It is sick! lol. No really. It is almost like since she wasn't present and I didn't get to know her or something like that. Or maybe it was because I really liked Hannah? Maybe?
Look, I'll be honest, here; I had a moment when I put down the book and thought--if I didn't like this Matt character I could definitely see how he'd be serial killer/stalker material. Yeah! Creeper! He admits it though, err...sort of? He does some bizarre things. And yet, even in the bizarre-ness of his behavior, I STILL 'got' him and felt for him and was rooting for him (while sometimes enjoying his discomfort --does that make me awful?).
NO! I feel the same way! Thank You M. Pierce for giving us Matt's point of view. Without the dual point-of-view I don't think we would have enjoyed it as much because we wouldn't have had Matt's inner thoughts and motivations. This would have been about 1,000x more confusing. And none of what he did would have made sense, not that anything he did makes all that much sense. He's a mysterious guy. Luckily also that the fact he has a girlfriend and pursues Hannah is in the blurb, so I was prepared that it was likely going there and got over it quick as well. He gets manic, anxious, and paranoid in his thoughts and actions, and it is written so well that we can see it and feel it and know that things are going to get crazy before the book is done!
NO! I feel the same way! Thank You M. Pierce for giving us Matt's point of view. Without the dual point-of-view I don't think we would have enjoyed it as much because we wouldn't have had Matt's inner thoughts and motivations. This would have been about 1,000x more confusing. And none of what he did would have made sense, not that anything he did makes all that much sense. He's a mysterious guy. Luckily also that the fact he has a girlfriend and pursues Hannah is in the blurb, so I was prepared that it was likely going there and got over it quick as well. He gets manic, anxious, and paranoid in his thoughts and actions, and it is written so well that we can see it and feel it and know that things are going to get crazy before the book is done!
The sex in this novel is ...well.. everything you've heard. It's hot, as in thermonuclear-melt-your-
I think those are all pretty good reasons. I think we love it because it is uncomfortable. That makes for the best stories, and we're always onboard for anything dark and twisty. It shoved me right off the cliff of my comfort zone. He is depraved. He is controlling. He likes to call her a slut and push her boundaries too. And she likes it. She likes it a lot, which had us liking it. So we were like "tha fuck?" Is this okay? Does this make sense? For this story it totally does. But it is not for the faint of heart. There is nothing vanilla about the two of them from their cyber sex, to phone sex, to their actual sex. It is off the charts with O_O moments from how they get together, how he talks to her, how she talks to him. They become pretty obsessed, pretty quickly. It seems to have weirded out a lot of people, but I think it adds to the teeny details that are going to be really important later. My theory.
I realize that I've said a lot about Matt-- it just seems like it's more of his story. Yes, I completely agree. Or maybe I just connected more with him? But Hannah deserves some attention too. I liked her enough, I suppose at the beginning, but I found myself liking her more and more as the novel progressed. She is honest and flawed and does dumb things and all of that tallies up to being so real. She hurts and grieves and struggles.She stands up for herself and makes the most of opportunities and experiences. She loves and is angry and conflicted and admits to being mad at herself for all of her feelings. She fights against her inner turmoil and she recognizes when to give in to it. She just comes off as such a real person that whether she ended up with Matt in the end or not, I wanted her to be happy and I was determined that I was going to be okay with how it worked out for her no matter what.
I liked her progression also. It is obvious that she is much better at dealing with things than Matt is. She is open and honest, and that is one of the many reasons I enjoyed her so much. Shelley said it really well what kind of character she is so I won't repeat that, but she moved back to Denver to restart her life. And in a very interesting way she did just that.
The writing. I am drooling. The metafiction aspect. The literature references. Some of the lines of prose. The fact that Matt is a grammar snob and that he instructs that in order for her to break the rules she must master them (may have to use that in my classes!). All of it. Just all of it. So good.
I am stumped over the metafiction aspect.Shelley had to explain the metafiction part to me, because I seriously didn't know what it was. So I shall tell you if you are a bit in the dark as I was:
Metafiction, also known as romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, uses self-reference to draw attention to itself as a work of art, while exposing the “truth" of a story. "Metafiction" is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection. It can be compared to presentational theatre, which does not let the audience forget it is viewing a play; metafiction does not let the reader forget he or she is reading a fictional work. (wikipedia)So with this metafiction business, you'll notice the author's pen name is the same as the main character's pen name, who is also an author. *kaboom* What? Wow. Again, what? It makes the entire experience very cool because there are intentional similarities (Hello, Laurence). The blending of aspects of beautiful literature and romance made this novel an absolute home-run. This part to me puts Night Owl in a league far surpassing anything I have read recently. It made it onto my life changer list, where I don't put many books. I won't ever forget it.
I could go on and on. The plot is interesting. The families of both Matt and Hannah enhance the knowing of them. Bethany and her shit...pisses me off and yet it's so vindictive and what many women would do, unfortunately. The epilogue..fuuuuck, THE EPILOGUE (or epic-logue..jesus h). The epilogue has me stumped as well. Did not see that coming. I admit I was scared to death to read this at all because well, I am damned dramatic and didn't know if my little emotional heart could take it. But I am so glad we read it! So very glad! It has flipped my reading on it's axis and I am trying to figure out how I feel about that.
I'm done. I can't. Not able to do it justice. Just go freaking buy the damn book and THEN come talk to me (that is probably the best idea!). And if you don't like it..well FINE...we may not be able to be friends anymore. MAYBE. It should be apparent at this point that I'm looking forward to book 2 (understatement of 2014) and I'm happy that there is a little mind fuck of a teaser on his blog...so I'll try not to beg or plead or make idle threats about what will happen if it doesn't come out this summer; let's just hope that it does. It is a catch-22! I am so very excited that M. Pierce is being published by St. Martin's Press (love them) but it does take longer to get what we want. We'll have to sit on our hands to tone down the tweeting. (Okay, M. Pierce, sorry that probably is not going to happen.) Though, at this point there is no other purpose for me in life other than to see if there is a new teaser or something I missed that there is to know.
I bet Amazon will crash because of the downloads on release day. I hope it does! This book and author deserves all of the success in the world, because the writing is soooooooo good.
I think Hannah best captures how I felt when I finally decided that I had to detach from my Night Owl obsession: "Every small separation echoed a vaster goodbye".
Shelley: 5 Stars x all of the stars out there and the new ones being born
Courtney: What she said \m/
Oh. P.S. There is quite a bit of medical stuff in here. I was impressed. Not that I'm an expert, but it is irritating when things are misused and my nurse brain almost explodes. So I enjoyed that part very much!
We love, love, LOVE The Neighbourhood and thought this song hit on some things in Night Owl: Yep, this song is my Night Owl theme song. The sensual beat, some of the words. It fit for us big time.
Courtney: What she said \m/
Oh. P.S. There is quite a bit of medical stuff in here. I was impressed. Not that I'm an expert, but it is irritating when things are misused and my nurse brain almost explodes. So I enjoyed that part very much!
We love, love, LOVE The Neighbourhood and thought this song hit on some things in Night Owl: Yep, this song is my Night Owl theme song. The sensual beat, some of the words. It fit for us big time.
About the Author: err...sort of! ---
I'm an avid reader and bestselling author living in Colorado. You can find my book Night Owl here on Amazon and you can read about my upcoming books at http://mpiercefiction.com/.
I have heard so many things about this book and wasn't entirely sold on adding it to my TBR until this review. I am so curious to see what has you girls all twisted up!
ReplyDeleteI love The Neighbourhood! Good song choice for this book. Oh yea, great review, too :) OBVI!
ReplyDelete...maybe my favorite book in 2014 would be LAST LIGHT by M. Pierce? Yeah, I thinks so!
ReplyDelete