Review: The Hurricane by R.J. Prescott

The Hurricane - Cormac “the Hurricane” O’Connell and Emily McCarthy

(The Hurricane #1)

Summary:

From Goodreads.com

Emily McCarthy is living in fear of a dark and dangerous past. A gifted mathematician, she is little more than a hollow, broken shell, trying desperately to make ends meet long enough to finish her degree.

Through an unlikely friendship with the aging, cantankerous owner of an old boxing gym, Em is thrown into the path of the most dangerous man that she has ever met.

Cormac “the Hurricane” O’Connell is cut, tattooed and dangerous. He is a lethal weapon with no safety and everyone is waiting for the mis-fire. He’s never been knocked out before, but when he meet Em he falls, HARD. Unlike any other girl he’s ever met, she doesn’t want anything from him, but just being around her makes him want to be a better person.

They are polar opposites who were never meant to find each other, but some things are just worth the fight.

Review:

Im actually not that into fighter contemporary romance novels especially New Adult ones but something about the blub really grabbed my attention so I decided to give it a whirl. I am super stoked that I did! This is one of my favorite new books by a new to me author.  When I finished the book, after I managed to pull myself out of my book coma I messaged one of my best friends and fellow readers that she absolutely had to read this book, even knowing that she dislikes New Adult. Before she had even finished the book she was asking if there were any other books in the series out, sadly, I had to break the news to her at there are not any at the moment but there are some to come…

So now that we’ve established that I pretty much loved this book, I guess I should tell you why. The main reason… the characters… every last one of them of which there are many.  Even tho the book is set in England all of our fighters are Irish so they have the Irish brogue going on for them. In this book our hero is Cormac. Of course he’s brash and before he meets Emily, is just drifting through life, drinking too much, screwing too many women just because he can. He doesn’t take his boxing seriously much to his buddies and hos coaches dismay.  One day he sees Emily though the window of where is coach and mentor Danny is eating. The young timid waitress grabs his attention like no other females has ever done. It’s weeks before he can manage to work up the nerve to meet her and when he does his life as he knows it is OVER.  The book basically starts with this meeting and grabs you from the first few pages.  Emily is super timid and has gone through her most of her life afraid, with good reason. She is hiding from those that were supposed to protect her. She is young, scared and has no friends except Danny the old man who always sits in her section. When this big bad man comes in and sits with Danny it takes everything she has to go over to the table and serve them. She’s at once scared what someone so big could do to her and in awe of the power that radiates from him. She later learns he’s a fighter and has no problem believing that. When Danny offers her a job working on his books she has no idea she is about to enter her own version of her personal hell, there is violence all around her but she needs this job so she finds some inner strength she didn’t know she had and marches into the gym only to be faced with the handsome man in the booth and it’s all over from there.

I loved watching the journey these two make, separate they are both broken hollow shells of what they could be, but together they become whole and start to heal wounds that would have remained open otherwise. Cormac’s physical strength lends itself to Emily to allow her to start to feel safe which allows her to open her eyes to the world around her and come out of her self-imposed shell.  Emily’s innocence, inner strength and innate goodness lends itself to Cormac to allow him to stop being so angry at the world and start channeling that into his boxing. Before Emily he was adrift, with her, he finds a focus he never knew he had to make something of himself. The go on this journey together and the reader gets to see it all.  I also liked that Emily, doesn’t just give into Cormac, she actually makes him work for it. He has to prove himself worthy of her, and he sets out to do so. He knows she’s worth it! In setting out to prove something to her he ends up proving something to himself as well.  The story is such a journey that I devoured.  I also liked that both of them were struggling for money, so much so that they didn’t have phone so they brought back the love note, which was so freak’n cute.

Ok, ok. I can probably ramble on much longer about this book and how much I loved it but it’s long enough. I’ll let you go.. to read it for yourself. 

**review copy provided for an honest review. No other compensation provided.