REVIEW: Cam Girl by Leah Raeder

Vada Bergen is broke, the black sheep of her family, and moving a thousand miles away from home for grad school, but she’s got the two things she loves most: her art and her best friend—and sometimes more—Ellis Carraway. Ellis and Vada have a friendship so consuming it’s hard to tell where one girl ends and the other begins. It’s intense. It’s a little codependent. And nothing can tear them apart.

Until an accident on an icy winter road changes everything.

Vada is left deeply scarred, both emotionally and physically. Her once-promising art career is cut short. And Ellis pulls away, unwilling to talk about that night. Everything Vada loved is gone.

She’s got nothing left to lose.

So when she meets some smooth-talking entrepreneurs who offer to set her up as a cam girl, she can’t say no. All Vada has to do is spend a couple hours each night stripping on webcam, and the “tips” come pouring in.

It’s just a kinky escape from reality until a client gets serious. “Blue” is mysterious, alluring, and more interested in Vada’s life than her body. Online, they chat intimately. Blue helps her heal. And he pays well, but he wants her all to himself. No more cam shows. It’s an easy decision: she’s starting to fall for him. But the steamier it gets, the more she craves the real man behind the keyboard. So Vada pops the question:

Can we meet IRL?

Blue agrees, on one condition. A condition that brings back a ghost from her past. Now Vada must confront the devastating secrets she's been running from—those of others, and those she's been keeping from herself...

First of all, please, please, please see Shelley's review. It was epic in it's entirety and I hope to maybe do justice to my feelings, as Shel was able to! 

So, a long time ago I read Unteachable, and I enjoyed it a lot...but I can't say that I enjoyed it as much as Leah's next book Black Iris. She really dug deep with that one, and brought out a lot of rawness, and confliction and even affliction in her characters that I was in awe of. And now...I am speechless after finishing Cam Girl, when the one thing I need to be is vocal, to adequately tell you how I feel about this book. 

Vada and Ellis are friends, and maybe more, and we enter our stage with them arguing and get into a life changing car accident. I feel that I have to mention how great this opening scene was...because as an Orthopaedic Trauma nurse... any time a medical, and especially ortho problem waltzes into my reading I perk up and am prepared to be disappointed with the inaccuracies. I however am so ecstatic to report to you that I was not disappointed, and am in awe actually of how this was portrayed. 

THEN, things get so much more complicated in the aftermath than I would have ever expected. After Black Iris, and the games that were played I had NO IDEA what would come my way in this one, and trust me...my blog partner would rather cut off her own arm than give any plot secrets away because then I would be sad too...soooo....lol....I was dying. And even had a moment of shouty caps-ing her, and am just so in AWE of this book. It was so ridiculously flawless in writing that not only set our scenes with vivid prose and description, but brought out the raw beauty of human emotion, and depression. I can't adequately tell you all of the reasons why you should read this, but the layer upon layer upon layer of plot, and the twists that I tried so hard to figure out but couldn't (I've been thinking myself quite the maestro of predicting stuff....but I'm not, go figure). I love Brandt even more in this book than I did the last one, and I don't care if that makes me messed up or not! #brandtfanclub and the thing that I think I love most about this story and Leah's writing is the fact that each character messes up, omg in the worst way possible, and they fight and hate and love, and then crash together and apart every time...but when someone is loved...they love fiercely and hang on tight. I love that. I won't tell you who, what, when, where or how...but with each addition of a character that I didn't expect, I just got more. 

I am more so than ever excited about Bad Boy (I need to know desperately who the MC's are of that book! Desperately!) and have dubbed thee, Cam Girl, my absolute favorite book of 2015. Wow, right. It's diverse in every way it possibly can be, and it is raw. It is brilliant, and evocative. It is everything.

About Leah Raeder:

LEAH RAEDER is a writer and unabashed nerd. Aside from reading her brains out, she enjoys graphic design, video games, fine whiskey, and the art of self-deprecation. She lives with her very own manic pixie dream boy in Chicago.

(And she still writes pretentiously lyrical fiction.)

Find her here: website | twitter | FB | pinterest | instagram | tumblr