Laura’s Review of Rock Bottom (Tristan & Danika, #2) by R.K. Lilley

If you love Gabriel’s Rapture by Sylvain Reynard, Cage by Harper Sloan, and Disastrous by E.L. Montes then you will love this book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Basic Summary:  Their love had the power of a runaway freight train, and the potential to be just as a destructive.  The tempestuous sequel to Bad Things picks up where the first book left off.  Reeling from a profound loss, Tristan and Danika struggle to pick up the pieces and build a life together, but the hard habits of a lifetime are not so easy to escape. 

                Rock Bottom takes us on a dual point of view journey through addiction and desire, through love and agony, and answers the question we’ve been asking since these characters were introduced in Grounded: “What happened between Tristan and Danika?”

“I meant the words when I said them, but life had other plans for us.  I was, by nature, a fighter, and one could say I didn’t fight for us.  I’d have given my life for that fight.  In fact, I very nearly did.”

What I Love About This Book: The first book in this series reels you right into Tristan and Danika’s relationship and you instantly can’t get enough.  If you have read the In Flight series you know that at a certain point Tristan and Danika has a huge falling out that somehow ends with Danika being permanently injured and presently walks with a limp.  In Grounded you get the feeling that whatever happened between the two of them it was years before but still tortured both of them.  I loved Bad Things, and I knew Rock Bottom would answer the question of what happened to them and that this book would end very badly.

                This book starts off very hottttt, and continues throughout the story with some very elaborate and lustful sex scenes.  Danika is someone that any girl can latch onto, fighting for a relationship that at certain point is hanging by a thread.  We have all tried to fight for a relationship that should’ve been over already because you are so blinded by your love that the stubbornness persists stringing along something that is already dead.  Tristan didn’t really have a lot of time to get over his brother, Jared’s death.  He immediately signs a record deal and goes out to L.A. and tries to distract himself with his band, drugs, and Danika; anything that will take away the pain of Jared being dead.  He never really deals with his grief and to me that was the first step into his downward spiral, and with a past that includes medicating himself old habits die hard and has no issues with plunging right back into that sort of pattern. 

                There is so much loss and devastation in this book it’s just leaves you completely raw and open after reading it.  I was hysterically crying at certain points, and beaming at others.  It was wonderful to finally find out what happened to Tristan and Danika but damn, this story ripped my heart out and then beat it up over and over again.  I was so angry at parts I wanted to scream at these people, and I was so sad for Danika and Tristan at other parts I just wanted to hug them and make it all better.  It’s so hard to stop someone’s downward spiral especially when it affects you so negatively at the same time.  Danika became Tristan’s enabler and you can’t blame her for that, because she just loves him so desperately and completely.  Tristan has experienced so much loss and can only deal with his pain the best way he knows how, even if that means I wanted to punch him in the face at times.  Even if a book invokes a negative emotion from me I think it makes me love it even more, I would rather want to scream and throw my kindle across the room then feel nothing at all.  It’s the books that make me feel nothing at all that are bad, and even though I felt totally shattered by the time I ended this book I was okay with that because I just fell more and more in love with Tristan and Danika because of it.

“This was the kind of love that only hit you once in your life”

Cons: The flow of this book was a little off for me.  I don’t really know how to explain it, but at certain points in the plot I felt like it was just a little too forced rather than a story developing naturally.  The chapters that were from Frankie’s POV were great, and it was awesome to see James before he met Bianca and what he was like as a real Dom.  But I felt like the chapters were kind of just randomly put in the book, it would've been nice to see them link better into the overall plot of the book.  The chapters kind of just started and ended with no real string from one to the other. 

                Also I feel like towards the end Frankie was nowhere to be seen in this story.  You have the two random chapters about her and Estella and then she was gone.  Where was Frankie after the accident, or when Tristan was spiraling?  I didn't like the inconsistency with that relationship, when someone is an important character in the book but then not mentioned again.  

“Tragedy never took its full chunk out of you right away.  It always took a while to hit you head on, and sink in and for something substantial, some hint of the real feeling, the real reaction, to come to the surface, and this loss was not done taking its toll on us.”

Overall:  Like I said before I knew this story would end badly, and I just couldn't wait to finally get to the end and have all my questions answered.  I powered through as was up till 1 in the morning yesterday reading because the story is so good and I love Danika and Tristan so much.  I was not prepared at how raw I felt when it was all done.  At the end there is a scene with Danika and Bev and I was balling like a baby, because that kind of unwavering support from someone is so hard to find and it was so touching to see it play out in this book.  I do have some questions that I would like to be answered, that I hope Lovely Trigger (Book 3) will answer them for me.  

                I don’t think I have ever rooted for a couple in a book more than I have rooted for Tristan and Danika and I can’t wait to for Lovely Trigger to come out.  I went back and read over the parts in Grounded where Danika was either mentioned or in, and it’s like she’s half a person.  That there is something essentially missing from her, some sort of light that is in a human being that is whole is not there.  It’s easy to see after reading this book what has caused this transition from the person you meet in Bad Things to the person you first meet in Grounded.  I don’t know how anyone could survive the sequence of events that she and Tristan survived but god bless them!  When Danika was desperate to save her relationship with Tristan I felt just as desperate for them to work things out, when she was devastated I was devastated.  This is such a great bitter sweet story, and since there is another book in this series and it takes place six years later and after Grounded (In Flight #3) that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for these two.  I’m praying there is some sort of happily ever after, but for right now I am totally heartbroken after reading this story.