My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Ramsay is a brilliantly written and breathtakingly beautiful second-chance love story that bleeds passion and angst as it breaks and builds the heart over and over again. Touching. Tender. Turbulent. Thought-provoking. Ramsay is not just a story but a full-blown immersion where the heart, breath, and soul collide as they become one.
I wanted to savor Ramsay but I could not help but devour this book with a desperate hunger like my last meal…my last breath. This story consumed me. Captivated me. Caressed my soul.
From the very first page, Mia Sheridan’s vivid words immediately came to life like paint to a canvas. The words are colors that splashed against my soul with each stroke of the brush. My senses were heightened as the world bared life from page to mind to heart. I smelled the fresh cut grass and honeysuckle. I tasted those scorching kisses. I felt Brogan’s strong arms around me as I felt everything in this story. I didn’t have to read much to know that the end result would be one magnificent masterpiece.
Just 10 percent into Ramsay and this story quickly overcame me—heart, head, body, breath and soul—captivating and crushing me ceaselessly. My heart nearly beat out of my chest. My body was on fire as my pulse pounded more with each page. Tears streamed early on and never really ceased.
I cried…a lot. Feelings bled into tears, heartbreak bled into happiness, hope rose from the bloodshed. I could not help but feel each word I read in Ramsay, my emotions entangled in this soul-searing story where they remained as I became unglued.
The beautiful man with an Irish accent and Gaelic tongue stole my heart and is still holding it tightly. As a teenager working with his father as gardeners at a rich family’s estate, Brogan Ramsay experienced the most passionate night of his life and the ultimate betrayal as he was used like a piece of trash by Lydia De Havilland, the beautiful and blonde rich girl who he cared for and he thought cared for him. Her mean-spirited and twisted brother, Stuart, discarded Brogan like a piece of trash, rendering his family and him useless and destitute.
“Why was she doing this to me? Making me hope for things I could never have?”
My heart instantly broke for this beaten and beautiful man. And oh is Brogan beautiful. I have a new boyfriend and his name is Brogan Ramsay. Black hair. Blue eyes. Tall. Muscular. Irish-American who speaks with an accent and in Gaelic. One of high conviction and honor. So complex. So caring. So protective. So beautiful—inside and out. I fell in insta-love with this multi-faceted man, a deep connection that felt a bit real.
Lydia De Havilland. Beautiful, blonde, curvy, and a former spoiled rich girl who has blossomed into a woman who is just as beautiful inside as out, like Brogan. I want to hate Lydia but I can’t as there is much more to her and this story than meets the eye. As quickly as I hated Lydia, I fell in love with her too. Lydia encounters Brogan seven years later and the tables have turned. He is no longer the sweet boy Lydia adored but is now a revenge-seeking avenger.
“My God. He hated me vehemently. After all this time.”
Brogan can’t forget that devastatingly beautiful night seven years ago where Lydia claimed his body and heart yet humiliated him.
“The humiliation. The rage. The hopelessness. The grief. The memory of what she’d done still pulled tight like an internal scar.”
Brogan still holds onto this hate and is determined to destroy Lydia and her family as retribution.
“If I exacted the revenge I’d been imagining for so long, I’d be free of her. Exercised of her ghost, the one that had been haunting me for seven years.”
Lydia remembers a sweet and caring boy who stole her heart—not this cold and calculating man who is now enacting blackmail where she is the pawn for payback in a twisted game. Brogan wants to carry out revenge yet reclaim Lydia, the only girl he has ever loved.
“There is a thin veil between love and hate.”
Like a pendulum, I shifted between Lydia and Brogan. Love. Hate. Love. Hate. The tension of these characters turned to me. I felt their angst as I warred with these words. I absorbed Brogan and Lydia, feeling their pain. The hate. The heartbreak. EVERYTHING. Brogan and Lydia love and loathe like fire and ice. Their chemistry is intense and intoxicating, breathing passion into the pages. I was on fire right along with this combative yet caring couple.
“He was going to kiss me…and I wanted him to—possibly even more than the first time…It felt like a symphony rose in every cell of my body as I became reacquainted so easily with his taste, his touch.”
Swoon. I’m swooning and rooting hard for this couple to be reunited. To survive this seven year war.
“There was still so much between us, so much unresolved, untold.”
Brogan and Lydia. Two soulmates that have been split in half for seven years. Despite distance, misunderstandings, and time, these two hearts still beat as one. Though their souls are lost— anchored by the painful past—and won’t be found until they are together again.
“I’d orchestrated my own demise. I was going to go down and go down hard again.”
I’m drowning to breathe, mourning that Ramsay is over, as I clutch an invisible clover while tears catapult down my cheeks. Life is moving around me but my heart is still breathing this book. This story gripped me hard and never let go as it tore open my heart like a gaping wound, gutting me.
I bawled like a baby, never quite stopping the tears that flowed. My heart shook and shattered. Through the cracks of darkness, bits of light emerged, shining a sliver of hope into my soul. Ramsay ruined me. Rescued me. Branded me. Breathed life into me. Became me. My soul is spinning, my heart is heavy, and my breath is still bated from one of the best romantic roller coasters I’ve ever experienced: Ramsay.
Mia Sheridan is one wondrous writer. A visionary. Mia Sheridan makes you a believer in love, hope, and what’s beyond the happily after. Her sensational and soul-searing stories make you believe that life is indeed bigger than this earth. It lives on in something so breathtakingly beautiful that one can only ponder its existence.
From Archer’s Voice to Ramsay, which is now my new favorite book by this author, Mia Sheridan breathes life into a story that hits straight to the heart. Her meaningful and mesmerizing words matter. Each of Mia Sheridan’s poignantly penned pieces own a piece of my soul. One of my new favorite books of all time, Ramsay is pure poignant perfection. Ramsay is a magical and meaningful modern day fairytale of epic love, the kind that lives on long after the story is over.
5 ‘ but worth way more’ devastatingly beautiful bleeding stars
Lydia De Havilland is shocked when Brogan Ramsay suddenly reappears in her life. Several years before, Brogan was the son of her family’s gardener, and the boy she hurt and betrayed. But Brogan is no longer the quiet, sensitive boy she remembers. Now he’s a man—gorgeous, powerful . . . and seeking vengeance.
Brogan Ramsay can’t let go of the memory of Lydia tricking him cruelly, leaving his heart shattered and his family penniless. And now he’s back to destroy her family the way his was destroyed. There’s only one problem . . . the girl who wounded him so badly years ago is now a woman who still has the power to render him breathless.
Ramsay is the story of betrayal and wrath, of the strength of regret and the power of forgiveness. It is the story of the thin veil between love and hate, and how more often than not, when we seek to inflict pain on others, the heart we wound is our own.
THIS IS A STAND-ALONE SIGN OF LOVE NOVEL, INSPIRED BY ARIES. New Adult Contemporary Romance: Due to strong language and sexual content, this book is not intended for readers under the age of 18.
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