Begin With Me, by Claudia Burgoa (Chaotic Love Book 1)

Summary

Abby and Wes are both seemingly fortunate individuals tortured by their pasts. Well-paying jobs, a loving family, and a top class education would certainly spell success for many people. But Abby has a secret she has never told anyone, not her therapists or the family that takes her in, cares for, and fosters her. Wes, her adopted brother, knows she has her secrets, but lets her keep them despite the affection and attraction they feel for each other.

When he realizes she returns his feelings, they begin dating. Yet as he begins to probe and pressure Abby into confronting her past, she begins to doubt her sanity and ability to cope with her past trauma. When that trauma becomes a reality again, nearly killing her, Abby must decide how to proceed with her life and newly found love.

The end of the book is a cliffhanger that has you instantly clicking the purchase button on Back to You (Chaotic Love Book 2).

Evaluation

The plot is fairly simple to follow, with the exception of the murky past that surrounds Abby. Her traumatic background isn’t revealed, merely hinted at more and more as we get further into the story. The conflicts within the story, both external and internal, made my stomach clench and my heart drop at times. The weaknesses Wes reveals about his own life have us hoping Abby will be strong enough to support him. The half-informed decisions and repressed emotions from Abby drive the plot and have you hoping Wes will be man enough to save her. As evil villains emerge from her past, we are left hoping Wes can make it in time.

The style of the book is extremely modern, with simple, sometimes repetitive writing. There were choppy, nearly cheesy parts that could have been fleshed out a bit more, or explained in detail more somewhere else. For example, I am dying to hear about Wes’s brother, Sterling, in the next novel. There was not an overabundance of figurative language. Most of the book was written as dialogue or literal, concrete descriptions. There were times where it was difficult to flesh out the reality and the nightmare in Abby’s mind, but looking back, it made the feeling of the novel more realistic. I imagine that is how someone with PTSD goes through life – seeing it fractured and struggling to differentiate what’s a flashback from the past and what’s real.

The topics covered within this novel are controversial and emotional. The foster care system is one such topic. While we see the positives of it from Abby’s perspective, Wes and his brother have a somewhat complicated relationship due to it. Another tough issue is child and domestic abuse. Wes’s history involves starvation, while Abby’s fractured memories hint at starvation, sexual trafficking, and other forms of abuse. We witness other touchy subjects in the form of business ethics and father-son relationships. PTSD is at the heart of this novel in many ways. Although Abby is indeed fighting a physical demon in the form of a man from her past, she is also not handling her mental and emotional demons. She is merely trying to repress them until they rear up at the most inopportune times. The sexual scenes are somewhat abrupt, but stirring. Most of them come from Wes’s perspective because of Abby’s traumatic past.

Similar/Related Reading

Back to You (Chaotic Love Book 2) by Claudia Burgoa

Best Kind of Broken by Chelsea Fine