C. M. McKenna’s compelling voice has earned a devoted audience and multiple awards for her erotic fiction. Her page-turning literary debut,Badger, disturbs and titillates with the story of a recovering pill addict whose compulsive fascination with a Boston antihero spirals out of control. Nearly twelve months sober, Adrian Birch feels like a nobody. But when her wrist is broken in a hit-and-run accident, she’s avenged by the Badger, a secretive street vigilante. Instantly obsessed, Adrian takes to staging suicide and constructing chance meetings to get his attention. Their resulting affair is harsh and needy, wrought with McKenna’s signature dark eroticism—until the connection gets out of hand and ignites the violent passions of the city.
5 STARS!
"I felt as if I was standing next to a celebrity, an angel, my grubby cut-rate Christ."
Well then! I honestly wasn't expecting this book to take the direction it took when I started reading it. I mean, what should I have expected when all I new going in was that the "hero" was a vigilante and the heroine a recovering addict? I ad visions of an obsessive relationship (mainly from the hero...sorry I can't help myself) ensuing, some smutty scenes and wait for it an epic romance! Shoot me, I'm a romantic So obviously it really didn't turn out like that.
From the moment Adrian and Badger meet, they feel this invisible rope tugging them together. For Adrian, an reluctant romantic, it's like she can finally focus her addictive personality on something other than the Vicodin she was hooked on and for Badger, well I can't really say anything convincing about the guy because I don't think I really understood his character... and not in a bad way. I was at a disadvantage when I started reading this book is told completely from Adrian's POV. So when I though that Badger was a sweet misunderstood guy, it was because Adrian thought so. Thing about Badger is that his character was so complex and his mood so erratic I don't think he really new who he was either. He was that sweet and misunderstood guy and everything else a guy could be.
"When I see something that pisses me off, it's like..." His gaze jumped all over, as if the words he wanted might be scrawled on the walls or the windows. It's like hell opens up inside my head.
I felt like I was desperately grasping for anything that would help me believe what I wanted to believe about Badger. My preconceived Hero. I went through so many phases while reading this book. From liking him, to loving him to writing him off and then believing in him. This book put me through a freaking cesspool of emotions. It was difficult reading about such a toxic relationship and then halfway though the book I start thing. "You know what maybe it just isn't meant to be. This guy is a dickhead. But I told you, I was grasping desperately so if there was a straw I was on it.
"We suck as a couple." he said. If that's what we are."
My heart froze, shocked that he'd suggest it. Shocked and euphoric. Even I hadn't been ready to thing such a thing, and I had it pretty damn for him.
"But I'm okay with us sucking." he went on. I got no problem with you thinking, 'Shit, this guy's such a bad fucking idea.' I got no designs on being normal. I'm never gonna be normal."
Ultimately I really wasn't looking to read a book like this when I started reading it. But I kind of got over that when I realised I couldn't put it down. It was completely depressing and utterly unputdownable and I'm just so fucking sad right now.
"You know," he panted, "it's not just the pain. "It's that you put those there."
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