Raw by Belle Aurora
REVIEW: I read Raw a while ago but I was not able to come to terms with it until recently. Raw is not your typical love story, and it isn’t either your typical erotic romance. Raw is one of those stories that stays in the back of your mind even after months of having read it. It imprints in the memory and doesn’t let go.
When I came across this book in Amazon I felt a certain attraction to the cover and I found myself clicking on it and reading the description, I was bought the moment I read it and I proceeded to read it. I know at first I wasn’t entirely sold, I felt like it resemble many of the stories being published at the time but there was a bit of distinction to it that made it different for me.
The plot is compelling and intricate, the story develops around Twitch, a man who knows torment from a very young age and one who has made his torment part of his life, he bends it, he manipulates it and spreads it around. Raw as the name implies is a very dark and complex story where love doesn’t necessarily has a place, and where the circumstances of life are exposed and explained in vivid details.
There is passion, there are life lessons and there is pain. Raw covers a variety of subjects that most authors and romance stories don’t tend to focus on. It ranges from domestic violence to stalking, without giving or taking away the validity of the characters actions. I enjoyed this book because it didn’t read as the typical romance with bits and pieces of eroticism and the lack of depth. I liked this book because unlike many, it brings many questions to the table, it pushes the reader to question their own decisions about love and life. It pushes the limits and boundaries and for me that’s what I enjoyed about Raw. Do not expect a love story, because it certainly isn’t. Expect a vivid and quite realistic set of events in a young man’s life, a young man who suffered a lot, but a man who used life many circumstances to his advantage, because it helped him shape the man he one day would become.
These characters felt real, their conflicts and their struggles as well. Our definition of ever after does not translate the same in Raw, what we may see as unfinished it is in fact an aspect of life one learns to live with, in reality not everything has a happy ending.
If you are looking for an intense and realistic story about love, absolution, second chances and life changing events then Raw is for you. Do not expect romance in the general meaning of the world, in Raw the definition of romance means a whole different thing.
