Series: Standalone
Release Date: April 8th, 2014
WHAT HAPPENS when the teenage heirs of two bitterly FEUDING FAMILIES can’t stay away from each other?
The Rhodales and the Whitfields have been sworn enemies for close on a hundred years, with a whole slew of adulterous affairs, financial backstabbing, and blackmailing that’s escalated the rivalry to its current state of tense ceasefire.
IT’S TIME TO LIGHT THE FUSE . . .
And now a meth lab explosion in rural Whitfield County is set to reignite the feud more viciously than ever before. Especially when the toxic fire that results throws together two unlikely spectators—proper good girl Victoria Whitfield, exiled from boarding school after her father’s real estate business melts down in disgrace, and town motorcycle rebel Mickey Rhodale, too late as always to thwart his older brothers’ dangerous drug deals.
Victoria and Mickey are about to find out the most passionate romances are the forbidden ones.
. . . ON A POWDER KEG FULL OF PENT-UP DESIRE, risk-taking daredevilry, and the desperate actions that erupt when a generation of teens inherits nothing but hate.
• BIPOC characters
• LGBTQIA+ characters
• characters with a disability
And doesn’t address fatphobia
• Gun violence
• Drug dealing and running
• Corrupt cops
• Blackmail
• Physical violence
• No descriptive sex scene with OW/OM
• Does have the Hero and Heroine pushing away
• Does not have a separation between the Hero and Heroine
• See Ending for HEA status.
• See Possible Triggers for Abuse and OTT sad parts.
Rating: 4.5/5 stars
The typical Shakespearean tragedy, Romeo and Juliet told with a Justified twist is the book The Lonesome Young.
Although the book does follow the typical clichéd plot of two feuding families, who obviously hate each other, with a privileged rich girl and a guy from the wrong side of the tracks, down on his luck–it was awesome! But I feel that I have to mention that I never get tired of clichéd plots, like Romeo and Juliet or the admittedly overused Cinderella plot, as long as they’re done well. And this book was!
Lucy Connors did an excellent job of making both Mickey and Victoria more dimensional than the people they emulate: Romeo and Juliet. Unlike Juliet, Victoria has a hard time being the mediator in her family: being more than perfect to make up for her druggie older sister and her younger brother, who still wants to be a kid. And then there’s Mickey, who, unlike Romeo, is too busy worrying about how his two older half-brothers choices will affect his lives and the lives of those he loves.
But the main difference between the original tale of Romeo and Juliet and this novel was noticeable: both the characters are seventeen, and both are incredibly more mature. They see how their choices will affect their families and the consequences of their actions. And yet it doesn’t stop them. I feel the reason that this book did so well was that the characters felt so real. The Lonesome Young was told in first person dual POV, which meant the reader got to experience a situation from both sides of the couple, and you got to see where each character was coming from.
And since Mickey’s older brother is the definition of trouble, his bad decisions end up leaking into Mickey’s life, which creates loads of problems for Mickey and his relationship with Victoria. This leads to the other part that made The Lonesome Young so exciting: the family drama and family history. Mickey and Victoria are both familiar with looking out for their siblings and trying to protect or understand their parents. Still, a lot of the book was about how their past family history, being their great-great grandparent’s bad decisions, or even how their parents created a rippling effect, which caused all these problems to occur in the present. It was fascinating, and because of all this drama, I always felt that the other shoe was going to drop, because hello, every other page it felt like Mickey or Victoria was being told to end their relationship with the other… or else.
The best part of The Lonesome Young was that I honestly never knew what was going to happen next. There were so many parts of the equation that I didn’t yet know or even understand that I felt like maybe Mickey and Victoria’s ending wouldn’t have a HEA.
A plot derived from the famous story Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed lovers and in The Lonesome Young from opposite sides of society with feuding families, this is a must-read! And although the storyline has been used over and over again, Lucy Connors did an excellent job by adding layers and twists to the plot. The story of The Lonesome Young, therefore, becomes a journey none like any previously told; with a country twist, you never know what the next page will contain.
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