'Til Death, Volume 2 ('Til Death #2) by Bella Jewel

You know how it went for me. 
You know what he did. 
You know the fire he left inside my soul when he crushed me into a thousand tiny pieces. 
Since Marcus, my life has been a blur of emptiness. 
Since Marcus there has been nothing. 
I’m alone, my Mom is dwindling and I feel nothing but emptiness. I work long, I work hard, but why? There’s no longer anything to fight for. 
I know I have to face him. I know I have to go back. To fix my life, I have to break my ties to him. 
Seeing Marcus again will destroy me, but it’s time to finish this. 
I don’t expect the bitter, twisted emotions I’ll feel when I see him again, and when I lose everything once more, because of him, the only thing on my mind is revenge. 
But how do you hurt someone you still love so deeply? 
How can I still care for a monster? How can he still make me feel? 
Our story is the most complicated of them all, it’s far from beautiful, it’s far from perfect, it’s just a twisted mess of emotion that neither of us knows how to fix. 
But we will fix it. You’ll see.

---

Review by Amanda

This is book number 2 and the final instalment of this series.  It picks up about two years after book 1.  We find Katia and her mother living in absolute squalor in a small town.  Katia has completely shut down, and has escaped her old life – she has no contact with anyone from her past, except for Candy and Josh.  Katia lives with her mom and the daughter she shares with Marcus, Penny, in a tiny apartment where she battles to make ends meet and works excruciatingly long hours just to try and keep a roof over their head and to feed them.

A surprise visit from Josh convinces Katia that it is now time to bury the past, she needs to face her mortal enemy – Marcus and get a divorce so that she can finally move on with her life.  She calls on her father Pierre to help her, she wants to return to town, but not have Marcus know.  Pierre offers for her to stay with him and his oldest son, Ford (her half brother).  At best her and Ford have a tumultuous relationship, and even though she does her best to be friendly with him, it is clear that Ford blames her for all their father’s mistakes.

After being home for a while, she is convinced by her two other half brothers to have a night on the town, the evening turns disasterous when she runs into Marcus.  They have an erotic and steamy encounter in the alley way outside. However, Katia soon realises her mistake and goes rushing to find her brothers so that they can take her home.  After much back and forth between the two, the events of the past and present finally push Katia to her breaking point.  She approaches Mack (who also happens to be a close friend of Marcus) and asks him to help her in hiring a hit man.  As expected things don’t go as planned and Mack breaks the news to Marcus who is left completely devastated by the news that Katia would consider doing this to him.  With Mack unwilling to help, Katia is forced to approach another MC and the leader agrees to it, but seeing Katia, he tells her he won’t make the hit for another 48 hours, so she has time to consider what she is doing.

Katia does eventually relent and cancels the hit on Marcus.  At the same time Penny comes down with pneumonia and she is forced to rush her to hospital.  Penny is very ill and Katia knows she needs to tell Marcus, she fears this may be the first and last time he may meet his daughter.  Marcus is livid when he finds out, he storms out of the hospital and is quickly approached by Pierre.  The two have a heart to heart as Pierre can relate to never having known about a child and not being around to help raise her.  He convinces Marcus to return to the hospital room, where he and Katia hold vigil over little Penny.

Marcus and Katia’s relationship is amicable and the two build a tenuous friendship, Katia discovers her feelings for Marcus have never left and she wants to give their relationship another chance.  After a magical night between her and Marcus, she discovers he doesn’t want the same and is left heartbroken.

However, Marcus is merely giving them both the space they need to rebuild themselves and their lives in order to provide their daughter with the best of them.

This book is bittersweet for me.   I LOVED book 1, I couldn’t get enough of it, but I did find book 2 left me wanting.  Whilst I understand that Katia and Marcus needed to be broken, they were so severely broken it was like they weren’t even the same people.  Marcus was no longer the bad to the tough guy alpha male, in fact I found him to be really whingy and incredibly annoying.  Katia was almost spineless, and did things without regard for anyone else.

I am giving this book 4 stars, because although I enjoyed it, I didn’t love it.

---

Goodreads

Amazon US

Barnes & Noble

Meet Bella Jewel

My name is Bella Jewel, but you can call me Belly. I'm a fun loving, happy go lucky girl that took a shot at writing. After doing a few creative writing courses, and reading until my eyes were ready to fall out, I decided to have a go at it. My first book Hell's Knights was released on the 20th August 2013. It's been a thrilling experience and I'm always up for meeting new people. You can come and find me on Facebook under Author Bella Jewel, so pop in and say hi!!!

Love and hugs,
Bella xxx

---