An emotional love story that follows the touch-and-go relationship of Hayden and Tenley; two young people who desperately want to love and be loved but are afraid to completely let go of their pasts.

As Hayden and Tenley navigate their newfound but slightly unstable relationship, they want to trust each other, but Hayden is hiding a dark and shameful past that he doesn't ever want Tenley to find out about. And Tenley has secrets of her own that could make Hayden run away forever. When Tenley asks Hayden to put a beautifully elaborate tattoo across her back, the two form what they thought was an unshakeable bond. But when Tenley's past shows up on her doorstep, will Hayden stand by her side...or run? 

contains spoilers

I wish I could rate this higher but I can't. I got this ARC from NetGalley a few months a go and finally got round to reading it. I had to DNF this at 76% and that's because of the length of the book mostly.
This book is long. It's 391 pages of just everything I've already read in these kind of books and it just....it was just too much. About 40% in, I wasn't into it anymore. At the start of this book, I honestly thought I';d end up loving it but it was just sex, tattoo, drama, sex, scars, sob story, sex, more sex, fight, tattoo, drama, sex, emotions, sex. It wore off really quickly. Nothing was really happening. I could probably put up with it if the book was shorter but damn, nearly 400 pages of that



Hayden was fine. He has a traumatic past like Tenley and had his wild player days before meeting her, of course. All guys in these type of stories have to have been a player at some point, that's the formula. There was insta-love but it might of been insta-lust as he wanted to have sex with her as soon as he saw her, I just had to roll my eyes but I tried to get past that. Tenley gave in quite soon and they had this forbidden thing because he's not allowed to sleep with clients. That just went on for ages and I began to tire of it. I was at that point where I thought 'who gives a fuck, just do what you want' 

Tenley was attempting to heal from a traumatic experience, fair enough, but she did get on my nerves a bit. I became very uninterested in her mid-book and she just continued to become quite irritating but that might be just me. It was all me me me, woe is me. Hayden had a bad past too, love.

One of my pet peeves is the word 'broken' and 'fix' in a New Adult book. This book had a CONVERSATION with 'she's broken. You're broken. You can't fix her unless you fix you. But i'm not broken. You are broken. You're both broken together, you can fix eachother-' 



I cannot stand those overused words and Helena Hunting went too far with having a fucking page full of those words...................don't even. 

*breathes* moving on..

I have to say, the writing - except from that conversation - was very good. I can't fault it at all because it flowed really well, the duel POV was a good idea for a book like this, I just wish the pacing was better. So much could of been taken out that wasn't needed. 

I don't really have much to say on this one. It does have some good reviews so I wouldn't stop someone from reading it. It has a lot of potential, it just wasn't for me. I found the emotions and the 'i can't be with you, but i will, but we shouldn't' conversations a bit tedious. 

Too long, too predictable but good writing and a story with potential. 


GoodReads
Clipped Wings by Helena Hunting

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