{Book Review} Falling Away (Fall Away #3) by Penelope Douglas (@PenDouglas @SignetEclipse)

Jaxon is the guy she’s supposed to avoid.

K.C. is the girl he won’t let get away....

K. C. Carter has always followed the rules—until this year, when a mistake leaves her the talk of her college campus and her carefully arranged life comes crashing to a halt. Now she’s stuck in her small hometown for the summer to complete her court-ordered community service, and to make matters worse, trouble is living right next door. 

Jaxon Trent is the worst kind of temptation and exactly what K.C. was supposed to stay away from in high school. But he never forgot her. She was the one girl who wouldn’t give him the time of day and the only one to ever say no. Fate has brought K.C. back into his life—except what he thought was a great twist of luck turns out to be too close for comfort. As the bond between them grows, he discovers that convincing K.C. to get out from her mother’s shadow is hard, but revealing the darkest parts of his soul is nearly impossible…

K.C. Carter is back in Shelburne Falls for the summer, but not by choice.  She's there to complete her community service for a quick lapse in judgment involving her cheating ex-boyfriend, Liam.  Rejected by her society mother, she’s now living at Tate’s and that puts her right in the orbit of the enigmatic Jaxon Trent.

K.C. has always been fascinated by the intense and wildly gorgeous Jax. Three years ago after one of his legendary parties, she walked in on him and not one – but two girls – and that scene is forever burned in her memory.  Her mind is telling her to stay far away from him, but her body couldn’t disagree more.

“So, what do you want?” she cried. “If not a one-night stand?”

I closed my burning eyes, and buried my lips in her hair. “I want to terrorize you,” I confessed. “I want to cut you without drawing blood. I want to break you.” I pulled her into me. “And then I want to fuck you.” 

Jax always watched K.C. from the sidelines.  He watched her waste her time with a worthless boyfriend and he watched her try to be someone other than who she really wanted to be.  All he ever wanted to do was to get close to her but he was just the dirty kid from the wrong side of town. 

A lot of things have changed in the three years since he last saw her and this time – he’s not going to let her go.

“Every morning you’d sit on the bleachers with your iPod and stare off onto the field. Staring at nothing. I wondered all the time what you were doing. What you were thinking about. You scared me.”

“Why?” he asked, sounding calm.

“I would never have hurt you, Juliet.”

I shrugged, not sure how to answer that. “I don’t know. Liam was safe, I guess. He pissed me off and hurt my feelings, but he never got under my skin.” Liam never made me cry. Forgetting me, disrespecting me, humiliating me—that all made me cry. But losing him to another woman never hurt. It wasn’t a loss. But Jax . . . I looked down, swallowing. “First time I saw you I knew . . ."

“Knew what?”

I met his eyes on the mirror. “That you’d mean more.”  

Jaxon Trent was so worth the wait!  Penelope has masterfully combined the best of New Adult with all of the scorching intensity of Erotica to make Falling Away the best installment in her series.  I was held completely spellbound from cover to cover and now with Aflame set for release in April – I am ready to do it all over again…

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