*Grabby Hands* Release & Review - Tell Me How This Ends by Victoria De La O

Image and blurb from Goodreads

  

 Title: Tell Me How This Ends
Author: Victoria De La O

Publication Date: November 1st, 2016
Category/Genre: New Adult Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Swerve

 

Brothers Jude and Ryan McAllister are inseparable. When Jude stepped in to raise Ryan after the death of their mother, it became the two of them against the world. But the scars it left were bone-deep. Then Lizzie Price comes along.

Lizzie hopes Ryan’s kindness can help heal her wounds from a toxic relationship. But when she meets Jude, their powerful attraction makes him difficult to resist. The problem is, Lizzie doesn’t realize Jude and Ryan are brothers, and they don’t know they’re falling for the same girl.

By the time the truth comes out, everyone is in too deep. Ryan is in love, Jude is in denial, and Lizzie wants both brothers. All of them agree that no one deserves to get hurt. But love and desire have a way of testing even the strongest bonds.

Goodreads

Buy Links: Amazon

4.0 “That’s how you write a freaking love triangle” Stars

ARC via NetGalley

Thank you, Swerve!

You guys, I did not expect to love this book this much. To be completely honest, I was kind of asking myself why I had requested a book with a “The Vampire Diaries” (minus the vampires) love triangle, since I had such a traumatizing experience with the whole Stefan-Elena-Damon dynamic. #TeamStelena in case you don’t already know.

Anyway… I feared this would be messy and the author would ruin the main character by making her force brother against brother while turning the MC into someone so selfish I couldn’t stand her (yeah, CW-Elena, I’m talking about you!). But, guys, I was wrong. So wrong.

Warning: Sorry, but hard to keep some spoilers out.

 This is the story of brothers Jude and Ryan and the girl they both love, Lizzie.

Lizzie meets shy, nerdy, super cute, Shakespeare-loving Ryan first. She’s attracted to him and asks him to tutor her—yeah, that kind of tutoring sessions, but Ryan doesn’t realize it at first. Cute.

But Lizzie also meets sexy, dark, mysterious, one-night-stand-kind-of-guy Jude. The attraction between them melts your Kindle, but Lizzie has had her fair share of guys with an attitude and Jude makes it clear he won’t be good for her. I mean, he’ll be good for her body (so damn good), but not to her heart. So they say their good-byes.

Lizzie is now free to see how it goes with Ryan, the boy who’s the opposite of the ex-boyfriend who made her feel like crap and even jeopardized her relationship with her father. Dude, Ryan is adorable. The perfect boyfriend. I’d date him. I’d let my daughter (even though I don’t have one) date him. He makes Lizzie happy.

There’s just this small problem. Ryan’s brother? Yeah… He’s the guy Lizzie can’t stop thinking about, and when he sees him again, she realizes he can’t stop thinking about her, either.

This is where I first steeled myself and waited for the author to make all the wrong calls. This is also where I learned Victoria De La O wouldn’t be making one.

Lizzie’s reaction when she realizes Ryan and Jude are related isn’t perfect, but it’s perfect for the situation. She doesn’t pretend nothing is happening. She doesn’t lie to Ryan. She tells him the truth: Dude, I kissed your bro and I liked it. *hugs Lizzie* *hugs the author* *hugs Ryan* I love how she just deals with it and is as honest as the situation calls. This was probably the moment I started believing this story would actually give me what I needed-a great love triangle that doesn’t make the characters look like a bunch of morons.

Ryan, being a little selfish, which is also great because it makes him human since he’d been so perfect up to then, asks Jude if he can deal with Lizzie being his little bro’s girlfriend. Jude, being selfless and showing how much he just wants his brother to be happy, says: go ahead, little bro, and date the only girl I think I could ever really fall for.

I adore how complex the relationship between Ryan and Jude is. How there’s not a good brother vs bad brother as one would initially think. Ryan can be selfish and dependable. He’s so used to having Jude’s support that he can take it for granted, but he’s such a pure soul that you can also see he doesn’t do it on purpose. And Jude, poor Jude, is so involved in his sense of duty and responsibility, so afraid of putting himself out there, that all you want to do is hug him and tell him that he isn’t the bad guy he wants other people to think. He deserves to be happy, too.

The thing is, it doesn’t seem possible for Jude and Ryan to find that happiness when it comes to their love lives together, because they’re desperately in love with the same girl. You know what else is the problem? You want them both to be happy and you can’t figure out how to fix that mess. At least I couldn’t. I just sat and felt and waited and felt some more.

This book made me feel so much. Gah! It was so good! So sexy. So intense. The angst? *sighs* Everything I needed.

Enough with the spoilers now because you should experience every step of this book without knowing what comes next.

Let me just say that the ending was everything I didn’t even know I needed. The way the three of them reacted to the reveal? The way Lizzie handled herself and refused to go the easy way? That letter? Perfection. That freaking letter made me tear up. Seriously. It just about killed me.

Look, I know a lot of people have problems with love triangles, but I can’t fault this one. I really can’t. Lizzie acted human (she made mistakes), but she was a good human (she tried really hard not to get between the brothers or cause permanent damage, and I think she succeeded). Ryan and Jude didn’t let a girl destroy the bond they had. The author didn’t turn them into idiots. In the contrary, she made me care for all three of them. She made me suffer and laugh and flirt with them. I couldn’t ask for anything else.

There were a few things here and there that I wished had been different, but they’re so small compared to the beauty of the relationships and the complexity of these characters and the situation they were involved…

Go read this books, guys. Even if you’re not a big fan of love triangles, go read it.

*If you liked this review (or not), if you read the book (or not), come say hello and leave your comments bellow.