GoodReads
There are stories where the girl gets her prince, and they live happily ever after. (This is not one of those stories.)
Jenna Lord's first sixteen years were not exactly a fairytale. Her father is a controlling psycho and her mother is a drunk. She used to count on her older brother—until he shipped off to Afghanistan. And then, of course, there was the time she almost died in a fire.
There are stories where the monster gets the girl, and we all shed tears for his innocent victim. (This is not one of those stories either.)
Mitch Anderson is many things: A dedicated teacher and coach. A caring husband. A man with a certain...magnetism.
And there are stories where it's hard to be sure who's a prince and who's a monster, who is a victim and who should live happily ever after. (These are the most interesting stories of all.)
Drowning Instinct is a novel of pain, deception, desperation, and love against the odds—and the rules.
Review
Starting this book I wasn't sure what to elect at all. I sort of started it just before meeting the author at an event for her current release Ashes and I wanted to get a feel for her work and stuff so thought I'd start with this book because it was the first I got via NetGalley. I got sucked in and found myself having read 40 odd pages before I'd even realised it. The style and voice was just so strong that I couldn't help but want to read more and more.
Ilsa J.Bick is a writer with a background in child psychology and work in stressful situations like the military so it's no shock to the system when you read her work and the detail and insight is so strong that you're almost shocked at how much though has gone into the aspects of the characters. Jenna is a girl with a history that would shock most people. She's been in a hospital for her mental issues and at a young age had to deal with severe burns all over her body and the pain of grafts and aftercare. Her family is broken to say the least with a bounder line crazy father with angry issues, a mother that drinks to hide from her problems and a brother away fighting for the army she has little in her life to care about.
She starts a new school after leaving the hospital (at her father's request) and tries to start her life over without her past holding on to tightly but there are hard habits to break and when situations arise that force her demons to appear again she has to fight herself to not fall back into dangerous ways. The light in this tunnel is her teacher Mitch Anderson that she is drawn to but being her teacher is a line she fears she is tempted to cross.
The book is seriously gripping from start to finish. i say that a lot but it really is and I think a big part of this was the way it was told. The book starts in a hospital after some major incident that has meant Jenna is being spoken to by the police and she is cold and in shock. So she is given a voice recorder to tell her story too and the rest of the book is spoken is segments as you would stop and start a recorder. It's such a clever way to tell a story because it shows the thought process and flow of this broken girl and how she's found herself in the state she is and you just can't help but want to know the answers. You wish for a happy ending that you know is likely not to come because Jenna has already told you at the beginning that the results of her story aren't good.
The only down side for me was believable that so much crap could happen to one girl and that some things to that happen may have happen the way Jenna tells it but then I guess because of the way it's told you don't know if any of it is true but you have to trust Jenna because she is your narrator. Compelling and heart pounding stuff.
