Review – Salvaged by Jay Crownover – Bookalicious Babes Blog

“Sometimes it takes a nudge to get the knight in shining armor to drop that shield he’s using to protect you.”

I end every Jay Crownover with tears streaming down my face. Sometimes those tears start early and stay etched in my eyes the whole time reading. Some move in ebbs and flows like the tide. All of my tears hit me like a hurricane: powerful, with a force I never quite see coming. That’s what Jay’s books are: heart-hitting hurricanes. Salvaged is a heartwarming and heart-wrenching hurricane, and oh did this romance RAVAGE and WRECK me.

The only way you can read a Jay Crownover book is to go ALL-IN: body…mind…heart…soul. I ditched life, took Salvaged, and made it MINE. I went FULL THROTTLE. I was ALL IN and I felt this story SEEP THROUGH MY SOUL.

There is no other author whose books I read that gives readers a GIFT, a personal chapter through the Introduction like the passion poured into Salvaged. Jay Crownover documents her writing journey of her books through their introductions that engage the readers’ emotions—feelings in full force—as much as the stories themselves. These introductions, like in Salvaged, are pieces of this author poured into her books, glimpses into what makes Jay ‘Jay,’ what hits her heart and surfaces in her soul. Life lessons are poured into these pre-book pieces, ones that make you really ponder your life. With each of Jay’s beautiful and brilliant books, I’m inspired and moved before I even start the story as I was with Salvaged.

He took something worthless and made it priceless. I couldn’t deny that there was a part of me that wanted to know if he could do the same thing with me.

I knew Poppy’s story would entangle me in a blanket of emotions where I would experience a mix of chills and heat. I knew her story would be a battle of feels, one I would feel with every ounce of me. I just didn’t expect to FEEL SO MUCH. Watching Poppy morph from an awkward duckling into a confident swan was a beautiful journey of self-discovery and healing from a life of hell.

I knew it was selfish and that I was walking on very dangerous ground, but I couldn’t stay away. She was hiding and I was seeking.

Wheeler is the perfect man: gorgeous, inked, compassionate, thoughtful, protective, and sexy. He is not Jay’s usual broken hero. Wheeler, a beauty inside and out, is the perfect knight-in-shining armor who knows when to wield his shield and go to battle for those who matter.

“I saw you, Poppy. When I had no right and no reason to be looking, I saw you.”

I MELTED into a puddle of goo.

Poppy and Wheeler are WARRIORS, a BEAUTIFUL build-up of strength and colliding souls. Both Poppy and Wheeler have broken pasts. A lone wolf seeks acceptance. A battered lamb seeks strength. Both seek love. Poppy and Wheeler are made for each other and I loved their journey of growth.

“I see you, Wheeler. Even when I wasn’t looking, I saw you.”

I MELTED even more.

Wheeler and Poppy brought each other back to life while Salvaged BROUGHT ME TO LIFE. This story grabbed my heart, holding it in its grasp, as it delved deep into my soul.

“When I didn’t know anything or believed in myself, I believed in you.”

I MELTED until I couldn’t melt anymore.

Salvaged, this SLOW BURN of a romance seeped into my soul, hitting my heart hard like a hurricane, and I FELT EVERY WORD…EVERYTHING. Salvaged is a splash of sun on top of a storm. Salvaged is strength and salvation after the hardest fought battle of and with life. Salvaged is EVERYTHING, and I LOVED THIS STORY HARD!!!

Jay Crownover takes you on an incredible journey with each book, and oh was Salvaged a heart-wrenching, heart-healing, and heartwarming HIGH. Salvaged left its mark, a mark that has lifted this story to a top 2017 read. Salvaged was my SOUL STORM, a hurricane of heart-wielding words that made me yield to every one.

I just can’t turn the feels left in the wake of Hurricane Jay off from Salvaged and I don’t want to; I want to keep living through her wondrous words that are LOVE AND LIFE. My heart is forever imprinted with Jay’s passionate and poignant words that pierce every part of me every time. That ‘Crownover Crack’, my term for Jay’s addicting words, coined after Rule was born, is my drug for life. This author writes MY KRYPTONITE. I’ll never stop chasing Jay’s words and hungering for more.

💋💋💋💋💋💋 sweet and strong ‘honey’ kisses

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Hudson Wheeler is a nice guy. Everyone knows it, including his fiancée who left him with a canceled wedding and a baby on the way. He’s tired of finishing last and is ready to start living in the moment with nights soaked in whiskey, fast cars, and even faster girls. He’s set to start living on the edge, but when he meets Poppy Cruz, her sad eyes in the most gorgeous face he’s ever seen hook him in right away. Wheeler can see Poppy’s pain and all he wants to do is take care of her and make her smile, whatever it takes.

Poppy can’t remember a time when she didn’t see strangers as the enemy. After a lifetime of being hurt from the men who swore to protect her, Poppy’s determined to keep herself safe by keeping everyone else at arm’s length. Wheeler’s sexy grin and rough hands from hours restoring classic cars shouldn’t captivate her, but every time she’s with him, she can’t help being pulled closer to him. Though she’s terrified to trust again, Poppy soon realizes it might hurt even more to shut Wheeler out—and the intense feelings pulsing through her are making it near impossible to resist him.

The only thing Poppy is sure of is that her heart is in need of some serious repair, and the more time she spends with Wheeler, the more she’s convinced he’s the only man with the tools to fix it.

I didn’t want her to be scared of anything ever again.

Things at home had been rocky, rougher than class-five rapids in winter, but I was paddling for my life and prepared to ride it out. I couldn’t let go. I wouldn’t let go. I saw Poppy the day she walked through my shop and I started to feel how sore my hands and my heart were from holding on.

Her head was down, focused on the tips of her shoes. Her shoulders were hunched over and her long hair hid her face. She was skinny, so skinny, nothing but skin and bones. She was nothing that I should have noticed, not because she was clearly doing everything in her power to be invisible, but because I was supposed to have my eyes locked on my future and doing whatever I could do to salvage it. But I did notice her and I couldn’t look away once I did.

She was obviously terrified, clearly out of her element and uncomfortable, but it wasn’t her unease that called to me…it was her loneliness. I could feel it filling up the space that separated us. Stretching, growing, expanding until it was all I was breathing in and exhaling back out. It was bitter on my tongue and heavy across my skin because I knew the feeling well. I lived with it pressing me down and pushing me forward every minute of every day. The reason I was so set on the way things had to be, the reason I was singlemindedly set on settling down and building a life with the girl that was slipping through my fingers was because I never again wanted to be as alone as this girl was. I didn’t want to be left and forgotten. I’d barely survived it the first time.

I did my best to sell her a car that was as beautiful as she was…a classic with clean lines and a flawless finish. She picked something practical and boring but that was ultimately safe and reliable. I understood her choice but it grated and annoyed me long after she left the shop. When she wasn’t standing in front of me, she should have been easy to forget; after all, everything in front of me, everything I had been working for and toward, was falling down in front of my eyes. My world was collapsing in on itself and everything I thought I was so goddamn sure about turned out to be nothing more than lies and illusions. In the middle of all of it, I couldn’t forget her sad eyes and shivering, shaking form. Her loneliness clung to me, unshakable and unforgettable. I didn’t think I would see her again and against my better judgment I often found myself wondering how she was doing and if she had gotten a handle on all the things that seemed to be crushing her under their inescapable weight.

I was wrong about seeing her again, just like I was wrong about thinking that doing everything in my life differently from how my mother had lived hers would ensure my happiness and a future built on an unshakeable foundation. I was wrong about hard work and sacrifice being enough. I was wrong about holding on when what I was holding on to desperately wanted me to let go. All I was left with was bleeding palms, rope burns around my heart and scars on my soul.

The next time I saw Poppy Cruz it was my loneliness that was filling up the space, suffocating me, choking me, making me forget to handle her with care. I was nothing more than a vast, open wound. One that was raw, aching, throbbing, and leaking my heart and shattered emotions out everywhere. I felt like I’d lost everything, like my entire life had been nothing but a waste of time, nothing more than building blocks knocked over with the swipe of a careless hand. The girl I loved didn’t love me back, my future was ultimately nothing more than a fuzzy, fractured blur. I couldn’t see anything clearly other than waste and ruin.

But I saw her. And I saw that I scared her.

It was the last thing I wanted to do but my loneliness was just as big and just as consuming as hers was. It spread out, hungry and angry, looking to consume anyone that might try and challenge its reign.

I tried to pull myself together, apologized because I knew our paths would cross again now that she lived next door to my best friend. I didn’t want to be another man that she was terrified of. I locked the loneliness down, wrestled it into submission, and tried to quiet down the wild inside of me that was howling, screaming at the loss of its mate. I wanted to be nothing more than gnashing teeth and tearing claws but I swallowed those instincts and allowed myself to be like a kicked puppy that just wanted to whimper and cry.

Poppy had been through more than I could imagine. She was the one I couldn’t look away from, but even then, she managed to slip past me and disappear. She looked like honey but she moved like a ghost. I memorized everything about her even though she hardly let me see her face.

I wasn’t supposed to be looking at anything other than how to salvage the mess my life was in, but she was all I could see.

A MUST-CLICK ROMANCE!!!

Amazon: http://amzn.to/2tmnUK8

Barnes & Noble: tinyurl.com/hqotakt

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/salvaged-7

Google: http://tinyurl.com/h4cv47s

iBooks: tinyurl.com/jfcz6yx

Amazon UK : http://tinyurl.com/zgmx5hp

Amazon Canada: http://tinyurl.com/jzd4cbq

Jay Crownover is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Marked Men, The Point, and the Saints of Denver series. Like her characters, she is a big fan of tattoos. She loves music and wishes she could be a rock star, but since she has no aptitude for singing or instrument playing, she’ll settle for writing stories with interesting characters that make the reader feel something. She lives in Colorado with her dogs.