Book Info
Behind the Mask by Harper RaySeries: The Masked Duet #1
Rating:
Book ratings explainedGenres: New Adult Romance, Romantic Suspense
Pages: 152
ASIN: B0CJDDGX7D
Published: 18/09/2023
Purchase at: Amazon | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon AU
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For five years, I've stayed away. I've hidden myself away like I was asked, abided by the threats that came my way and kept my mouth shut.
I'm done hiding.
Returning to my childhood town after so long wasn't an easy decision but I needed to move on from the past, take my life by the horns and make it my own again; scars and all. Yet, moving on isn't so easy when the man who stole your heart as a child turns up at your parents' house and with a shiny, new fiancรฉ hanging on his arm.
Between balancing the skeletons stashed away in my closet and my forbidden feelings that still lingered for Axel, I was sure my life couldn't possibly get any more overwhelming.
That was, until the threats began to pour in again and this time with a very deadly promise attached.
Behind The Mask - My Review
Harper Ray first released Behind The Mask in April 2020; In 2022 it was reworked and re-covered. I never got around to reading the original, so this review is based entirely on the revised 2022 edition of the book. It has now been re-released for 2023 and we’ll soon get to read the conclusion to the duet, Behind The Lies.
Olivia’s story is both heartbreaking and tragic, but I couldn’t relate to Axel at all. When Olivia first left him, back when they were still teenagers, Axel’s reaction probably wasn’t the most constructive course he could’ve taken. In the five years since, he’s supposedly grown up and gotten over Olivia, falling in love with a fiancรฉ who has helped him to learn to love again. Except when he and Olivia reconnect and things become challenging, he reverts to the angry teenager he once was. He hasn’t grown up at all and his behaviour is a stark contrast to all that Olivia has had to learn to deal with.
Reading Olivia’s flashbacks and her current struggles, I felt every moment of her pain. In romance novels, there’s a tendency to rush past the after-effects of sexual assault and gloss over the consequences of events. Ray doesn’t do that and she doesn’t hold back explaining just how damaging Olivia’s experiences have been. It’s by no means easy reading; it’s raw and honest but thoroughly agonising.
The first 3/4 of the book is slow-paced, focusing more on retelling the past than moving the story forward. It’s necessary though. Without this part of the story, the final quarter would be near-meaningless and considering so much is crammed into those final chapters it’s worth waiting to get to that point.
It’s rare that I comment on an author’s choice to spread a story across multiple books but this time I have to speak up. I can see why Ray has decided to split this story (and it splits in the perfect place) but at only 152 pages long, it feels like it could easily have been a single book written in two parts. Hopefully, we won’t have much longer to wait before Behind The Lies releases.
Last Updated on 20 September 2023 by Glowstars
