Wait For It
M. O'Keefe     
December 2021 Releases

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Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: Everything I Left Unsaid
Book: 4

In a blistering novel of raw emotion and desire, a tormented woman teaches an alpha male that money can’t fix everything . . . but love can.
 
Tiffany:After fighting for a new life, I don’t want to play the victim anymore. However, with three kids to raise, I’m getting desperate enough to make a deal with the devil. My estranged brother-in-law, Blake, says he just wants to help, but he’s been trouble since I met him. I don’t know if I can believe this kinder, gentler Blake, and there’s a friction between us that has turned into the sweetest chemistry. He could be my salvation . . . or my downfall.
 
Blake: I haven’t always had Tiffany’s best interests at heart but I’m ready to make up for my sins. Besides, I can’t help admiring her: The girl’s a genuine survivor, tough and lean, with eyes of steel. But the more I get to know Tiffany, the more I want her. Every inch of her. Which means I’m about to make a bad situation a hell of a lot worse.

Other books in the series:

I was in tears 5% into Wait For It. That’s when I knew this book would hurt my heart; that it would elicit ugly wrenching emotions. Those are the best kind of books.

Blake. Sigh. What can I say about our hero? He’s heartless. Quite ruthless. He’s the kind of hero you want to see fall, and fall hard.

I know how to break a man. I’m not proud of it, but it’s a skill. And a useful one in a fight and a business negotiation.

It’s a pretty simple science, really: find the hidden and secret place where they hoard all their weaknesses, and then apply the right pressure.

This is how he goes into his first meeting with Tiffany, his no-good brother’s estranged wife. A woman he’s never met and one he pays to stay away from the rest of his family, specifically his mother.

A year later, a desperate Tiffany piles her three children into her car and inadvertently breaks her promise by showing up at her friend’s house where Blake and his mother happen to be. The nightmare that is her estranged husband drove her from her apartment. Needless to say Blake is not happy to see her and she’s surprised and then filled with dread when she realizes he’s there. And it’s this scene that broke my heart in two. I cried for Tiffany. I cried for the love she has for her kids. I cried because although she acts tough and independent, she knows all too clearly how physically vulnerable she is at the hands of brutal man. *Just writing this is makes me choke up.*

Their relationship unfolds nicely from then on. It’s a gradual getting to know you. Blake learns that Tiffany is not at all like his brother, and Tiffany comes to know the same thing. Blake and Phil are not alike. Her husband’s brutality doesn’t run in the family. But Tiffany values her independence and is reluctant to take any more money from Blake as much as it would help. He’s already given her twenty grand to leave his family alone and that money’s gone. I would love to say I admire that about her, but personally, I wouldn’t have thought any less of her if she’d taken it.

I really liked being inside of Blake’s head. Without that I think I would have hated him. Maybe that’s too harsh. I wouldn’t have liked him nearly as much. I needed to know what made him tick and the events that shaped him into the man he’s become.

The first time I thought about killing my brother was at my father’s funeral. He showed up on the third day of a three-day bender, a bottle of Jack in his pocket and smelling of cigarettes and strippers. My mother’s face when she saw him…that keen mix of hope and fear, combined with all that grief… I swear to God, any last bit of feeling I had for my brother just turned to ash.

As I indicate above, Tiffany is one of those tough-talking but vulnerable heroines. She’s completely relatable to any woman who’s ever made a bad romantic pick. And frankly, to even those who haven’t. Suffice to say, she jumped into her relationship with her husband before she knew the “real” Phil. The real Phil is a selfish, drunken brute. Then of course there’s her family. Her younger sister is cool, but her parents—especially her father? Ugh. Not exactly the through thick and thin kind of parents.

I’m glad Blake and Tiffany found each other, even though it’s not under the best circumstances and the situation they find themselves in is far from ideal. But he needs humanizing and she needs to know that all men aren’t like Phil. Sex, which had once been enjoyable, is not any longer. I love that day by day, and with coaxing and patience, Blake helps change that. His methods are—er—interesting, but I’ll let you judge for yourself.

Now, I will admit that through almost the entire book I was waiting for Phil to show up. Really, I wanted him to get his ass kicked, and I wanted her to divorce the damn man. I wouldn’t have blinked twice if an out-of-control car had caught him crossing a street. I’m not saying that’s what happened, but I wouldn’t have minded that kind of solution. I’m still not sure I feel he got his just desserts but then I can be fairly blood thirty when it comes to abusive men.

All in all, Wait For It is a wonderful, emotional love story with top-notch writing. I enjoyed it from beginning to end, and look forward to whichever book comes next.

~ Beverley