Friday, July 24, 2015

Review: Out of Time (Nine Minutes #2) by Beth Flynn

~Synopsis~
They thought with his execution it would all be over.  They were wrong.

The leader of one of South Florida’s most notorious and brutal motorcycle gangs has been put to death by lethal injection. Days later, his family and friends should have been picking up the pieces, moving on. Instead, they’ve been catapulted into a world so twisted and dangerous even the most ruthless among them would be stunned to discover the tangled web of deception, not only on the dangerous streets of South Florida but all the way to the top.

In this gripping follow-up novel to Nine Minutes, Out of Time takes readers from the sun-drenched flatlands of 1950s Central Florida to the vivid tropical heat of Fort Lauderdale to the halls of Florida’s Death Row as we finally learn the gritty backstory of Jason “Grizz” Talbot, the terrifying leader of Satan’s Army motorcycle gang, and the secret he spent his life trying to conceal.

Not even Grizz’s inner circle knows his full story—the tragedy that enveloped his early life, the surprise discovery that made him the government’s most wanted and most feared, and the depths of his love for Ginny, the tenderhearted innocent he’d once abducted and later made his wife.

Once Grizz’s obsession and now the mother of his child, Ginny has spent years grieving the man she’d first resisted and then came to love. Now remarried to Tommy, a former member of the gang, the pair have spent more than a decade trying desperately to live a normal existence far from the violent, crime-ridden world they’d once carved out on the edge of the Florida Everglades. For Tommy, especially, the stakes are high. Desperately in love with Ginny for years, he’s finally living his dream: married to the woman he never thought he could have. But even with the façade of normalcy—thriving careers, two beautiful children, and a genuinely happy and loving marriage—they can’t seem to put the past behind them. Every time they turn around, another secret is revealed, unraveling the very bonds that hold them together.

And with Grizz finally put to death, now Ginny has learned secrets so dark, so evil she’s not even sure she can go on.

Will these secrets tear their love to pieces? And how far will Grizz go to protect what he still considers his, even from beyond the grave?
~My Review~
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I originally read Nine Minutes back in November of 2014.  I was totally not expecting what I read, and I mean that in a good way.  So when it ended on a cliffhanger, I knew I was going to have to read book 2 when it came out.  I bought Out of Time the day after it released (I somehow missed the release day, but happen to get an email from another blogger that it had been released).  I started reading it as soon as it got delivered to my kindle, and I read until the very end.  I may have stayed up well past my bedtime just so I could keep reading.

I really liked this book, but at the same time, was so frustrated.  This story is on par with the first book, yet so different.  It's so unlike any other books I've read in the past, and that's a good thing...It's nice to switch things up once in a while.  While there was a lot of story that needed to be told (the book was 450 pages), it was done in a very interesting manner.  There was story told from Ginny and Tommy's point of view in present time (2000).  There was story told from Grizz's point of view as a child in the 1950's.  There was story told from Tommy's point of view as a child - before he came to the motel, while he was living there, and after he left.  And there was story told from Grizz's point of view as an adult, watching Ginny while she was still living at home before he took her to the Motel.  In essence, there was a ton going on and with the switch of storylines and point of views, we were able to get a lot of answers and a lot of new information.  

I liked that we were able to learn more about Grizz, his childhood, and see some the decisions that he made throughout his life.  I also loved reading about Grunt and his childhood.  I knew from Nine Minutes that he was in love with Ginny, but Out of Time really made me understand how he came to be in love with her.  And it was these stories that I think I liked the most about the book.

There was so much information in this book.  While Ginny was left out of a lot of information, as she learned different aspects of the past, we learned them too, and I really liked that.

Nine Minutes gave us a really good story that introduced us to all of the characters, and presented story with great conflict.  This book continued on what was built in the first story, it presented new conflict and resolution, and then it also presented a couple new story lines that we didn't know about in the first book, that have yet to be resolved.

I think one of the reasons that I was up in the air about this book was that while I really appreciated getting a lot of answers, I was frustrated by the addition of new story that was left on a cliffhanger.  While lots of my questions from Nine Minutes were answered in Out of Time, we were left with another cliffhanger and I may have just as many questions, if not more than before.  There were major plot twists written into this story, and I totally wasn't expecting them.  These plot twists created new information which essentially created the cliffhanger.  When I did finally get to the end, I was almost confused as to why these plot twists took place and things didn't just stay buried.  But I didn't realize there was going to be a third book to this series, so I'm sure there must be a good reason for these plot twists and I'm interested to see how everything moves forward.

At the end of the day, my frustrations aside, this was still an amazingly well written book with deep characters and an awesome story line.  I still enjoyed what I read and I can't wait for what is hopefully the final chapter.

Link to Goodreads 
Link to Kindle

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