Review: Elect by Rachel Van Dyken

December 22, 2013 Julie Uncategorized 0 ★★★★★

Elect

Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romantic Suspense

Would you die for the one you love?
Nixon Abandonato made his choice. And now he has to pay the price. Tracey is the love of his life, but being with him has made her a target of his family's enemies. The only way to keep Trace alive is convince the world she means nothing to him.

Trace Rooks has fallen irrevocably in love with the son of her family's sworn rival, and she knows in her bones nothing can tear them apart. Until Nix suddenly pushes her away and into the arms of his best friend... But Trace isn't ready to give up on a future with Nix--and if he won't fight for them, she will.

In the end, a sacrifice must be made. A life for a life. For what better way to cover a multitude of sins than with the blood of a sinner . .

Wow. So while the first book in The Eagle Elite series took me a bit to get into ( although I loved it once the plot began to come together,) Elect started off like a runaway freight train, full speed ahead. The short prologue set the bar high with edge of the seat suspense.

Then the love triangle ripped my heart out, squeezing it into unrecognizable pieces. Generally, I’m not really a fan of love triangles. They often feel like forced devices that are inserted just to add a bit of drama and tension, without feeling authentic. Elect doesn’t suffer from that problem at all. I can see a very real reason why Tracey would be drawn to both Nixon and Chase. While Nixon is my personal choice, he truly has pushed her into Chase’s arms–literally–at every turn. Chase is the boy whose always there. Chase picks her up when Nixon knocks her down, and even though she knows as well as we do that Nixon knocks her down to protect her, it’s hard to explain that to your heart.

I also really loved the sub-plot in this one, of the friendships the boys have had since they were kids. The mafia angle really changes The Eagle Elite series, making it pretty much unlike anything else I’ve read recently. I’m hard pressed to think of things that I didn’t like about Elect, but if anything it is the prologue. I sort of feel like it was used just to worry the reader, and I think the book could have stood without it. They didn’t need to manufacture drama, there was plenty of that to go around.