Hard Roads by Lily White

 This life isn’t one that I chose for myself.

Years spent as a daughter in the Dominion MC left me washed up and struggling to breathe. Life was never flowers and sunshine. It was gravel and dust, the trails of dirt left behind when the brothers tore out, floating up from the ground to hover in front of an angry, red sun.

I could never have imagined that a life sitting at rock bottom could get any worse, but it did.

Life is funny like that.

Just when you think things can’t get any more bleak, a shade is drawn leaving you staggering and blind – lost in a world of heartache and sorrow.

I met J.D. Brooks on the road and he swept me off my feet. Literally. But not in the way you might think.

He was both an angel and a demon.

He was the most vicious storm that ever darkened my life.

He was also my salvation.

Stripped from the hands that always held me back, I was released into a nightmare that would threaten everything I thought I knew about the crap hand I’d been dealt.

I thought I could never hate a man more than the one who stole me from the life I’d known.

And in our time together, he would teach me one important lesson:

That in the end, it doesn’t matter how our paths intersect, because when it comes down to the basic truth of our lives...

...we’re all stuck traveling down hard roads.

I was very nervous to read this book.  Lily White has a way of crushing my heart by giving me characters I fall in love with only to watch them meet a tragic end.  Hard Roads was a great book, but it didn’t have the same intensity for me as her other books do.  I am not sure if that was because I went into this one a bit detached out of nerves or if it was because the plot was different from what I have come to know from her.  No matter what the reason was, it was still written with her perfection and flair that captures your attention from page one and never lets go till you finish and have to speed dial your therapist. 

Holly AKA Munch, grew up as the daughter to the president of the MC gang.  Her mother was called Saint and had died years earlier.  With her father basically missing in her life she grew up with the gang.  She was protected by some members yet she was also free to have sex as she wanted.  The one thing she was sure of, she didn’t want to end up with a biker.  She had dreams and goals but due to the stupid things her father was doing towards other gangs he was making the wrong people angry. Because of payback to her father, she found herself trapped in the trunk of her car and coming face to face with J.D. 

J.D. was the son of the president to another  MC gang.  He knew Holly when she was a little girl, never as the adult woman she turned out to be but he sure found out she was a fighter and not going to be easy to control.  Trying to finalize his last job with his gang so they would allow him to walk away free, he has to deliver Holly to a crazy drug dealer and walk away leaving her to her own fate which didn’t look bright.  He found this wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought.  She had worked her way into his thoughts and mind and he couldn’t walk away and leave her there to be tortured and raped.  The guilt would never allow him to move on with his life.

J.D. goes to the only person he knows that can help him and the plan was put in place to save Holly.  J.D. is going to have to help Holly rebuild her life and come out of the shell she put herself in if they can get her free, but they will worry about that after they see if she is even alive.  Ok so I can’t tell you more about what happens because trust me you need to experience it to believe it.  The book isn’t for the faint of heart, the weak stomach or anyone prone to nightmares.  She doesn’t disappoint with the ability to make you close one eye while reading because you don’t want to see it but you can’t turn your head. 

The character development is consistent to her style, they are so well created you feel you can reach out and touch them.  If I would have allowed myself to “fall in love” there were a few times J.D would have melted me and there are other characters that I loved to hate and hated that I feared to love them but Holly, now she was my hero in this story.  Such a strong woman who never lost her will to fight even when she was told death would result if she did.  It took extreme measures to shut her down but once she was able to see things clearly even in captivity she found her will to fight. 

I loved the message that Lily gave at the end of the story.  Sometimes for us to find where we need to go, be with the people we need to be with and see things as they really are in life, we have to go down hard roads.  We have to stumble and fall, get hurt and recover and we have to see that this is the one thing we all have in common.  No one is protected from tough times, broken hearts, loss of things and people and most of all, everyone will go down hard roads in life.  It depends on how we go down that road and how many times we get back up, now that is what determines our life.  

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