02 January 2015

Blackness Within by Norma Jeanne Karlsson

Fighting to find his worthy place in life…

This is the story of a woman that has worked tirelessly to build her own life from nothing. While the task has been exhaustive, it’s been worth every drop of sweat to earn her own slice of normal. Natasha Reynolds has built a life beyond an absent mother and a drug addict brother to become a home-owning, dog-loving nurse. But no matter how much distance she puts between the present and her past, she always finds herself dealing with the messes of those she loves. Once again, a hasty decision to save her beloved brother’s life has put Natasha in peril. With nowhere to turn, she goes to the only place she has left.

Brian O’Sullivan.

He’s an attorney, a ladies’ man and nothing but trouble. Natasha has spent two and a half years avoiding Brian’s smoldering grin and his smooth pickup lines. While he spends his days in courtrooms and suits, Brian would much rather be bloodying his knuckles and relishing in the crushing of bones. In order to help Natasha, he will have to be both the professional and the fighter. As Brian demolishes opponents, Natasha will struggle to hang onto her life. They will be ripped apart by the evil underbelly of the crime world and wage a war to escape the blackness within it that threatens to swallow them whole.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23124245-blackness-within?ac=1
I fell in love with this author and series a while back.  Each time I pick up the latest book in this series, I prepare myself for an epic journey with these characters.  You will find a family made by life circumstance and by choice.  Some will be connected by blood, others by marriage but all will be loyal and devoted to each other out of love and they find themselves in situations that could kill damage or destroy what they have created, but you will never find them turning their backs on each other. 
In this book we explore Sully and his new found love Natasha.  Kid is giving birth to her twins after a traumatic event that occurs to her and her brothers.  Natasha was her nurse and the latest woman Sully wanted to get in bed.  After two years of being turned down by her, something happened in her life that forced her to reach out to Kid for help, instead she got Sully. 
Natasha’s brother Blake was a druggie and when her mom asked her to check up on him one night, she found she had not only walked into a crack house, she walked out a criminal.  Sully is going to have to help her figure out what to do and get out of trouble but before he has a chance to do more with her, the criminals that she didn’t know she had now started a war with steps in and takes her.  When faced with the choice of risking her life to save her brothers comes up she does what Natasha does, she tries to save her brother once again.
During this Sully and his crew is fighting to save Natasha and the twists and turns of this story take you all over the place emotionally.  As with every book from this author, she left me feeling all sorts of emotions, from panic to elated, watching the crew back in action made my heart flitter with excitement and finally seeing Sully find the woman he needed in life was thrilling.  He wasn’t an easy man to conquer, but when Natasha didn’t even want a date that was what made the thrill of the chase happen. 
The events that occurred while she was in the hands of the crime Lords will make your head spin and your toes curl.  She had to make some choices quickly that won’t make sense to a lot of readers right away but once you get to the end of the book and see what the purpose of Roman was, you will be impressed with her brilliance at how she managed to stay a live. 
With each book as a stand-alone in this series, I highly recommend that you read all in order so you can really understand the intricate network of this “family”.  For some it will seem strange that Kid, who is also known as Shannon, has so many men in her life yet she is in love with only one.  For Sully to react the way he did in this book, you will have not understood the intensity and deep level of emotion in him if you didn’t see where he started from the beginning.  Some might say this is a love triangle book, but for me it never was.  Natasha did what she needed to do for Blake and Sully would be the guy to understand that with the past he has had with his “family”.  I fear if you only pick this one up to read you will miss out on some very important details that will help you see just how huge this story was for Sully and the gang. 
I highly recommend this author and series especially to those readers who want a wide range of emotions in the books and who loves a little darkness and twists to their reading.  I became a fan of this authors from book one and she just keeps impressing me with her new takes on the plots with the same group of characters and the fact I can never predict where she is going is priceless to me.  

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