Noah & Lorelei
For those who thought that Alison Rhymes couldn’t redeem Lorelai Simmons, they have been proved completely wrong! Not only did she redeem this character, but she also made us pity and like her, notwithstanding her wrong actions.
In Brutal Play, Drew McKenna cheated on his wife June with Lorelai. We suffered and cried as we read how June processed and dealt with her husband’s cheating. While dealing with this issue, she also accepted a contract to do TV programs with Noah Anders, Drew’s former competing quarterback and enemy. Noah turns out to be a great friend and he helped her navigate her route to reconcile with Drew. We also know that Lorelai is part of Noah’s past, same as Drew’s. In the first book, we hate her for being the other woman. In this book, Noah rescues her when she went to Drew in desperation, seeking help and after June slapped her silly.
As I expected, Lorelai has a horrid past, and her actions didn’t come from a desire for money per se, but to rescue her mother and baby sister from a religious, pedophilic cult. In this rescue effort, she used all her assets, liquid and real state and is now currently penniless and homeless. Noah takes her to his apartment and proceeds to vilify her, humiliate her, hurt her, all in the name of a petty revenge. Lorelai is captive because she has nowhere to go, nothing at all to live with. She can’t work because everyone hates the woman who “tried to break up” Seattle’s favorite couple, June and Drew McKenna.
This book made me cry several times. Such is the profound despair that Lorelai lives in. And yet, in all occasions, she behaved with grace and charm, even if she sometimes sassed Noah back. We learn about her history, her reasons for her actions, and we learn to forgive her, because her story is really horrible. When she disappears for two days and comes back with her little sister Olivia, we all fall in love with this little human, Noah most of all. Olivia was the perfect vehicle to demonstrate the horror from which she came, in her innocent ways. She was lovely and cute and cuddly and I loved seeing how Noah fell in love like a ton of bricks.
The route to redemption was complicated because Noah is then torn between two women he loves and needs in different ways. I loved how the author treated this challenge and loved that the solution was not perfect but completely believable and real. And in so doing, she has been cemented in my opinion as a very strong and talented story teller.
Purchase links
One-Click here: https://mybook.to/brutalplay
Add Brutal Play to your TBR: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61850104-brutal-play
About the author
Alison lives somewhere in the shadow of a Pacific Northwest Mountain, bordered by the Puget Sound, and not too far from the country roads she grew up on.
When not writing, she can be found avidly reading, traveling with youthful wanderlust, or slowly turning the inside of her house into her own personal houseplant jungle.
Content Warnings for Alison's books can be found on her website alisonrhymes.com
You can join Alison's newsletter to receive early news and bonus scenes: https://bit.ly/3dRWR5b
Alison can be contacted at alison@alisonrhymes.com
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