Title: Five Years Gone
Author: Marie Force
Release Date: October 9, 2018
MY RATING: ★★★★★
The most brazen terrorist attack in history. A country bent on revenge. A love affair cut short. A heart that never truly heals.
I knew on the day of the attack that our lives were changed forever. What I didn’t know then was that I’d never see John again after he deployed. One day he was living with me, sleeping next to me, making plans with me. The next day he was gone.
That was five years ago. The world has moved on from that awful day, but I’m stuck in my own personal hell, waiting for a man who may be dead for all I know. At my sister’s wedding, I meet Eric, the brother of the groom, and my heart comes alive once again.
The world is riveted by the capture of the terrorist mastermind, brought down by U.S. Special Forces in a daring raid. Now I am trapped between hoping I’ll hear from John and fearing what’ll become of my new life with Eric if I do.
From a New York Times bestselling author, Five Years Gone, a standalone contemporary, is an epic story of love, honor, duty, unbearable choices and impossible dilemmas.
Five Years Gone is the kind of book that will have your emotions twisted in about a dozen different directions, never knowing what to expect next. Ava's story is one of great love, great despair, and finding the ability to feel like kind of great love again. But with that once in a lifetime ability to feel the love she has felt for two different men, comes the deep responsibility of holding those tow men's hearts in the palm of your hand with every with the ability to do so much harm, but give so much love. It's an impossible situation we're (as readers using Ava's life as a looking glass) faced with.
There's no easy way to wade through the tumultuous mine field that is Five Years Gone. Ava is strong when she didn't think it was possible, and with Eric she finds someone to ease her burden. No matter that that burden should never be one lobbed onto his shoulders, but whoever said life is fair? John had an ever greater burden on his shoulders. And together, the three of them were forced with a reality of the utmost unfairness.
This book is beautiful, and heartaching. Every time I thought there would be an easy out, the harsh realities came blindingly crashing in. And mixed in with the highs and lows, was in elicit, amazing, and sensual bond being made that made each emotional hit balance out.
Ava is an endearing character, and a realistic one as well. Despite my thought that she had every right to go huddle in a corner with hot chocolate and a fuzzy blanket to escape from the cruel hand she'd been dealt, she also needed her head yanked out of her you-know-where from time to time and she had the perfect man to do that. Relationships, of all kinds, are about the give and take. And that is emulated wonderfully in this book.
With every touch of realism, romance, and entrancing storytelling Five Years Gone is a book to be savored and read with an open mind, heart, and calendar. You won't want to put this book down once you pick it up!
Marie Force is the New York Times bestselling author of contemporary romance, including the indie-published Gansett Island Series and the Fatal Series from Harlequin Books. In addition, she is the author of the Butler, Vermont Series, the Green Mountain Series and the erotic romance Quantum Series. In 2019, her new historical Gilded series from Kensington Books will debut with Duchess By Deception.
All together, her books have sold 6.5 million copies worldwide, have been translated into more than a dozen languages and have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list many times. She is also a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller, a Speigel bestseller in Germany, a frequent speaker and publishing workshop presenter as well as a publisher through her Jack’s House Publishing romance imprint. She is a two-time nominee for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA® award for romance fiction.
Her goals in life are simple—to finish raising two happy, healthy, productive young adults, to keep writing books for as long as she possibly can and to never be on a flight that makes the news.
