Review: Hide Me (Silver Strands #1) by Lexi Scott
Bookcrushin is happy to present this release day review for Hide Me by Lexi Scott. Hide Me was just released on July 7th, 2015 so be sure to pick up your copy here. Thank you to Entangled Publishing for an earc in exchange for an honest review.
Hide Me (Silver Strands #1) by Lexi Scott
Category: New Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Purchase: Amazon
Sometimes it’s easier to run…
Ripped apart by guilt and grief, nineteen-year-old Whit Conrad grabs her stuff and runs from her super-conservative home and family in Pennsylvania and hauls ass for sunny California. All she wants is escape. Now she has a craptastic apartment, a job at a tattoo parlour, and even a friend-who’s-mostly-benefits. Then she meets a sexy, inked, surfer-dude who has the potential of capsizing everything…
Deo Beckett is adrift. Underemployed and over-boozing, Deo knows he should be doing something more with his life. Being something more. All it takes is a pin-up hottie with a smart mouth—and a bruised soul—to force Deo to start looking below the surface. To wonder if there’s more to life than being a beach bum. Now he’s falling for Whit…and hard.
But Whit ran from home for a reason, and she’ll go to any lengths to keep Deo from learning the truth…
*previously released under Lengths in 2012
Review:
[book rating=3.0/5.0]Hide Me is a New Adult release that ticks all the buttons. Sexy hot surfer, great fun location, angst, drama, and tons of romance. We meet Deo, a sexy and laid back surfer, lacking direction, as he goes to a tattoo shop (a gift from his cool hippie mom) to get inked. There he meets Whit, a beautiful but guarded girl running the front desk at the shop. From the instant they meet sparks immediately fly. Unfortunately, sparks flew just a bit too soon for my taste. Kissing within a few minutes of meeting isn’t really my cup of tea, I prefer more of a slow build, but in this case the spontaneous nature of the hot hook-up makes more sense than not.
From this fiery moment of passion, Deo begins to pine, woo, and generally try to charm the pants off of the hot and cold Whit. Deo was the shining star of this story. If you didn’t get the vibe from the seriously sexy cover, he is a surfer and a bit of a slacker. What he lacks in ambition he makes up for in romantic devotion to Whit. It was a bit too much at times, mostly because I didn’t think that the ever prickly Whit was deserving of our heroes undying affections.
Whit is wounded; she is suffering through insurmountable grief and guilt and so she has built up walls around herself to keep anyone from really getting close. I have to say the big sore spot for me in this otherwise entertaining read was her character. While I understand some of her motivations, others just didn’t make much sense. In fact as a reader, I had a hard time connecting to her and therefore it made rooting for Deo to woo her over that much harder. I just didn’t think she deserved such a devoted and kick ass guy. There were other areas that were left sort of loose ended. I would have liked to see some resolution with Whit and her parents, especially since she left them grieving back in PA.
Still, the romantic scenes between Whit an Deo were super sexy. I have to say it was refreshing to read an NA that brought the sexy but didn’t go over the top with too much detail. There is something to be said for having a scene play out without it reading like a porno. The scenes were sweet, and some were very hot and did not detract from the overall story.
Without spoiling, I wasn’t a huge fan of the ending, and I don’t know if it’s again because I just didn’t gravitate to the Whit character or not. Her growth, didn’t come fast enough for me and while I love me an HEA, this one didn’t read as authentic for these two young characters. Still this series is going to continue with other characters in the Silver Strand universe and is definitely a series I’d be curious to check out and see where it leads. I recommend it for a fun beach read as it’s got the perfect setting already and really, who wouldn’t want a hot surfer to come home to, even if it’s on an e-reader?
