Salacious Sunday Review: Undeniable by Madeline Sheehan

 

by Madeline Sheehan

Summary: Warning: This is not a typical love story. This is an all-consuming, soul-crushing, tear-your-heart-into-pieces story. It’s intense, gritty and raw, dark and disturbing, and it doesn’t happen overnight. This is an epic love story that knows no boundaries and has no time limits. It grows and develops—with hurt, sacrifice, and heartache—over the span of a lifetime.

Eva Fox is the princess of the Silver Demons Motorcycle Club. Growing up with bikers in the club lifestyle is all that she knows. When she’s a young girl, Eva meets the reason for her existence. Deuce West is the sexy, biker bad-ass of the Hell’s Horsemen Motorcycle Club. Like Eva, he was born and raised in the club—but that’s where the similarities end. Their first meeting is innocent, but as Eva matures into a woman, their chance reunions evolve into a fit of lust and love. Fate continues to bring them together time and time again, but their twisted journey is filled with pain, betrayal, and bloodshed that could tear them apart. Eva sees in Deuce what he cannot see in himself—a man worthy of love—and Eva spends her lifetime proving to him that her undeniable love is the one thing he can’t live without.

This is Eva and Deuce’s story.

It wasn’t easy.
Nothing worth doing ever is.
And love is worth everything

Review:     Just like the book summary comes with a warning, so will my review. There is not a single doubt in my mind that this story is an adult only read. It isn't just sex and swearing, which they do A LOT, but this book has everything from rape and abuse to murder and torture. This author definitely took a no-holds-bar approach when writing this and never looked back. It is not for anyone who can't read something and know it is fictional and that is where I will start. If I read a newspaper article like this story I would be horrified., it would be a gut-wrenching case that is no doubt sick and twisted and any other word you can come up with for a story about a man who desperately needs psychiatric help that goes around raping and murdering more than a few people, a women who takes abusive both mental and physical  and ultimately has to do something horrible that I know I wouldn't be able to get over in order to save herself and a man who some would label a pedophile at the very beginning and an asshole (pardon my language) throughout the story. However, this IS a story, it is made up and thankfully don't have to think about someone actually going through this, even if I know someone out there probably has. 

             As a book, I thought it was a great story. It has defined, individual characters that have stories of their own within the bigger plot lines, and they tell those stories without making it drag or slow down within the overall story. It has plot twists that, several times, I did not seem coming.  Being a story about bikers, it is intense, possibly to a fault as I can understand why I see a lot of reviews out there were people just can't like it all due to it's violence and sexual nature. The relationships in this book are really what shine for me. There are several pairs of bikers and women that you want to know what happens too. They go on their individual roller coaster rides dealing with fights and love and babies and everything else there is for two people to go through. You watch different people come together that you probably didn't expect and I had moments where I wanted to reach through my e-reader and strangle a character or two, or maybe just slap some sense into them, but I think that makes a great story too. My opinion starts to waver, however, when some of the more ugly things start to happen.

           I'll start with Deuce and Eva because those are the main characters. There is an 18 year difference between the two, and normally I don't really have a problem with an age difference. However, they hook up for the first time......when she is 16. He gets shot twice for it, but that was......hard to read, you could say. I can understand where people have strong opinions with a book that has a lot of the dark topics it has in it and this is one of them. After the first few encounters of these two, Eva turns 18 and everything is legal between the two of them from then on, but that is a hard place to start. After starting out like that, they go through fighting and never really being together as well as not seeing each other for years at a time. The other big turn off  I could see with these two is the cheating. Particularly Deuce, cheats a lot, and I could never really wrap my head around this. Why did he need to go back to the biker women when he had such a great thing with Eva? He even did it when she was just in the other room. I dont think I will never get this part of the story, but on the other hand Eva and her relationships with men were different for me.

            First of all, we have to talk about Frankie, Eva's crazy once-husband, former adoptive brother and generally just messed up guy. He is literally psychotic,  after his father dies in a motorcycle accident he comes to live with Eva and her father and from very young has an obsession with her that is just not right. He sleeps in her bed, though they don't "do" anything from the time they are pre-teens, and he can not sleep at all unless Eva is next to him. As he gets older, he gets even more violent (even in relation to a bunch of crime-wielding bikers) and his obsession gets even worse. This is an abusive relationship, there is not a doubt about that. He forces sex with her more than one time, he pretty much forces her to marry him at one point simply because Eva loves him and wants to help him with all his problems, in the end only enabling his problem though she had only good intentions at heart. Simply put, she loves Frankie, but I don't believe it was ever a love between a husband and wife for her. I think she loved Frankie enough to do whatever she could to help him, but that hurt Eva far more than anything else could have. People can talk about what Deuce and the relationship he had with Eva did to her, but I shoulder the blame for how messed up Eva was squarely in this corner. Frankie is the reason Eva's life is so screwed up, even if I can say she could have got out, and stopped all the horrible things that were going on, I can't blame her for wanting to help someone she loves. I always wonder how family members of people who have done horrible thins can sit in a court room and support them, but I think this is a good example of why this happens. I have never been sidled with a situation like this, but this book may have showed me why they do it. It is messed up, but it is still love and it is still caring about that person that drives them.

              At the end of the story I still wanted Eva and Deuce to be together, despite everything that goes on between them, or between them and other people. I was surprised by this reaction because normally I would say, what is she thinking???? But, after reading the whole story I was happy to see a family between Deuce and Eva and I could see a change to make things better than what they were from the start. It may not be perfect, but I think their relationship is far better having gone through all of this, then just getting their happily ever after an easy way. I have a split decision in terms of my opinion for this book, so I will say this. If you can't get by the swearing (which is every other word) and you really can't stomach the things I talked about,I would pass, but if you want to read a dark, intense story I would burrow it- My Opinion: Burrow/Pass