Facade by Nyrae Dawn
Series: Games #2
Publisher: Forever (Grand Central Publishing)
Source: Netgalley
ISBN: 9781455576302
Release Date: July 2, 2013
Pages: 192
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Can love save them?
After her father commits a crime that shatters her family, eighteen-year-old Delaney Cross is tired of pretending everything is alright. Packing up her car, she sets out to find the people her father hurt. Her search leads her to places she's never been--and into the arms of Adrian Westfall.
To the outside world, Adrian is a sexy, charming ladies man. But his playboy persona is just an act. Secretly his soul is tortured by a memory too painful to share. Only Delaney seems to see through his façade to the real man underneath. And for the first time in his life, Adrian feels he can begin to open up about his past.
Together, Adrian and Delaney share a passionate, carefree love they never expected to find. Yet both still harbor their own secrets. When the dark truth is finally revealed, will it bring them closer together, or tear them apart forever?
Façade absolutely blew me away. Within pages I was hooked. Adrian and Delaney’s story was so sad, but with each page I
One evening four years ago, Adrian was watching his nephew, Ashton. While Ashton was playing in the front yard a distracted driver jumped the curb and killed him. Adrian has never forgiven himself for this as he felt it was his only job to watch out for him and blames himself for his death. Adrian has never even allowed his sister to forgive him. After the accident Adrian took off and hasn’t been in contact with her since the day it happened. Now he hides from his past and puts up a front so no one can become close to him again.
"When I was young, I was the quiet kid who didn’t talk, but left his heart on paper. Now she’ll see me as the flirtatious, fucked-up guy with a hidden depth that’s not really there. It’s nothing, but an optical illusion."
Delaney is also racked with guilt, but a different kind of guilt. Her father was the one driving that night and killed Adrian’s baby nephew. Delaney wants to make amends and thinks finding Adrian and talking about it will help him move on. She recently did so with Adrian’s sister, Angel, but needs to amend things with Adrian too. After that night both families changed. Adrian’s family lost their baby and Delaney’s was torn apart from her father’s mistake. Her mother starts to become depressed, spirals downward, and has several attempted suicides.
"An anchor lands on my chest, weighing me down with a million tons of guilt – for what my father did and the fact that Adrian doesn’t know."
The beginning of Façade was intense with the back story and on top of it you slowly find about Adrian’s childhood with an abusive father too.
When I was eight I saw my dad force himself on my mom for the first time. It’s the first memory I have of vomiting. Seeing her tears as she couldn’t look me straight in the eye and hearing her say, “It’s okay, baby. Close the door.” But it wasn’t fucking okay. I puked right there in the hallway, pizza from lunch all over my shirt and the floor.
Right away you feel the chemistry between the two characters. Even if Adrian was only trying to get into Delaney’s pants you could see he wanted to know more about her. He becomes protective of her and doesn’t want her to get hurt. I loved Delaney’s older brother Maddox. I definitely will be reading the third book to find out more about him. Maddox and Delaney are best friends and they support each other even when one thinks the other is making a bad decision (like starting a relationship with the person who their father killed a member of their family). I didn’t connect with Colt or Cheyenne at all. They just seemed like filler, even though I know they were from the first book. Maybe it was because their story was already complete? As the story progressed you want Delaney to tell Adrian the truth, but she doesn’t and the further the story went on without her admitting the truth the more you fall in love with them. But the whole time you’re thinking this is not going end well at all.
Oh the ending! The ending had me crying, and not just a little tear, but big ugly tears. I haven’t cried from a book like that in a while, but when the final truth about the night of the accident comes out I was bawling. I just wanted to hug Adrian so bad!
