Blog Tour: Roar by Aria Cage, Review + Teasers & Giveaway!

It was interesting to get inside Charlie's head. She is a victim of abuse, from her childhood to her teens, and even now that she's an adult. When she escaped the first monster in her life, she was thrust into the foster care system where she suffered even more abuse from the hands of her foster care families. If they weren't physical or verbal abusers, they could not penetrate her wall of defensiveness and depression. As an adult, she thought she found a new beginning with her boyfriend Paul, but he turned out to be yet another monster. Oh goodness... this girl just can't get a break from the universe.

As a result though, she came across as whiny and frustrating. She's always the first to say they need to stay away from each other. On the other hand, I do agree with her fear that the love Nate felt for her was merely the product of their abuse. I fully understood the reasoning behind that fear. It's not enough, however, for me to really like her.

Stop rescuing me and go live your life. I'm doing what you wanted; I'm going to be free of this caustic relationship and finally be safe as I try to work through my own demons. You need to work through yours... even if it means saying goodbye to me forever, or giving yourself to another and just be my friend. If, at the end of it, we find each other again, then we know it's real.

Nate was Charlie's childhood best friend, her first love and her protector. As a young boy, he was already willing to do everything for Charlie... even suffer the same abuse as she had suffered before they even met. Finally, he committed the final act that ended that first round of abuse. Sadly, it also became the reason that they became separated for so many years.

I'm a simple kind of man; I just want to find myself, be proud of what I do, love another, be loved by her. It can't be any simpler than that.

Theirs is definitely not an easy love story. I have to emphasize that because for two people to go through all the horrors that they did and still bear to be together, well. That must be some kind of love.

We liked Peter Pan the most... I think it was because I was Nate's Wendy bird, and he was my Peter. He would steal me away to escape the world and enter one where time stood still; his Neverland.

ROAR is definitely an emotional story. Reading through some of the recollections was very difficult for me. Both Charlie and Nate suffered so much not just in the hands of their tormentors but also by people who were--are--too quick to pass judgment. Instead of helping two children in dire help and need of protection, the very people who were in authority were the first to mete out additional punishment. :'(

I feel like the secondary characters, aside from Nona and Davey, were kind of underutilized. Connor sounded like a great gut, but he had too little page time to be truly memorable. Paul had the makings of an even bigger tormentor, but he became kind of puny in the end.

The constant shift from past to present also kind of threw me off. I get what the author was trying to do though, because the effect was truly dramatic most of the time. Maybe it there was just too much of the back-and-forth narration that I wasn't given the chance to really sink my teeth into the now and sympathize with what the characters are going through now.

Like I said though, I seem to be in the minority for because ROAR has lots of higher ratings. I just couldn't connect with Charlie and that's why I couldn't get into the story enough to give it a higher rating. Aria Cage's writing is very good though, and she's really good at writing short but dramatic scenes. This is her first work though, so I'll still look forward to her future books.

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About the Author:

My name is Aria and I have three confessions:
 

#1 No matter how much I try, I can't stop shopping at Typo or the local tattooist. I believe that would be how I would introduce myself at an anonymous club, right?


#2 I write under another name but I'm not going to tell you ... don't beg, she will kill me if I tell. Ha! So I guess you could call me a genre whore.


#3 My phone is my life line. I can't leave the house without it.
If you want to get to know me, follow my social pages on Facebook and twitter and my blog.