Laura’s Review of Rough (Chicago Underground, #1) By Skye Warren

Synopsis

I'm a cautionary tale. A statistic. A victim. A single teenage mother from the poor part of town. Most of the time I'm too busy working and struggling to care what people think. Survival doesn't come easy.

I have a dark secret, a pressure valve, a rare moment just for myself. On these nights I visit a club. There I find men who give me what I need. Men who aren't afraid to take what they want.

Men like Colin.

But he takes more than a few stolen hours. He demands more than my body. He wants my heart and soul--my happily ever after. I never thought I'd be Cinderella. I never thought a man that rough could be my prince.

What I Loved

         

           I really loved the beginning of this story, the absolute desperation that Allie is feeling the minute she finds she’s pregnant gripped my heart and had me attached to this book immediately.   As the reader my heart broke for this poor teenage girl that literally had nothing and now somehow has to find a way to take care of a baby on top of everything else.

          As the story moves along you instantly feel the depression and desolation that Allie feels every day, trying to take care of her daughter as best she can with her best friend Shelly as her only support.   You feel how vulnerable Allie is and my feelings went to her and it made me even more emotionally involved in the plot.  When Allie meets Collin, I instantly felt their connection and I loved that he came into her life and straightaway wanted to fix things for her.  He was this hot and sexy knight in shining armor and I fell so much in love with him because of that!

Not So Much

          For me, this book was very on the surface the entire time, the plot never got very deep and it made the story very lacking because of it.  The entire story had so much potential for more detail and more description but it never came and it was all big disappointment because of that.  The storyline itself was really good but the actions from scene to scene didn’t really make sense because there was no explanation at times.  Allie would say she was done with Colin and then in the next scene was he coming over or taking her out on a date and there would be no reason as to why she changed her mind.   There were just too many plot holes for me and fragmented sentences, so what could’ve been an amazing story was just okay because of the quality of the writing.

To Sum It All Up!

            Overall, this story had the potential to be compelling and sexy but fell short in a lot of aspects.  The foundation was really well laid out but everything after that fell apart.  The rest of the plot felt very rushed leaving out a lot of details and explanations. 

 

Allie and Colin were both written really well, two characters given hard circumstances trying to make the best of what was given to them.  Colin swoops in and has tried to fix a lot of Allie’s problems and I really loved that about him, I’m a sucker for knight in shining armors and Colin is totally that.  

There isn’t a huge cliffhanger but the plot does flow into the next book and from what I understand this is a three book arc.  I’m sort of interested to see where this story leads, but I do need the writing to get better to really keep my attention.