Wilder by Rebecca Yarros
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
”In the end we only regret the chances we didn’t take.” ~Unknown
Every day is a new beginning. A chance to love. A chance to live. A chance to dream. A chance to do! We live through our actions. We live through our memories. Sometimes we live through stories. I lived and loved through Wilder, a beautiful and broken love story by Rebecca Yarros, where I went on the emotional adventure of a lifetime—one of hope, heartbreak, and happiness.
I wanted to wait…taking my time to soak up every powerful and poignant word of Wilder. I wanted to rush…tearing through these pages like the adrenaline from this thrilling tale coursed through the story straight to me. After just a few pages, Wilder became my addiction. My ache. My adrenaline. MY ALL.
The story started out slow but a burn built that beckoned me right into the flames as my heart caught fire, a slow burn seeping into my soul, as Wilder bled into me. My emotions were amplified, a fusion of hope, heartbreak, and happiness swirling around in my head like a hurricane, waiting to hit where they would flood…all over this book…all over me.
These characters claimed me, captivated me, and catapulted me into their lives—this dare-devil adventure—where I wanted to free-fall off a cliff into the sea and float away with them and Wilder. This story sunk itself into me fast and furiously. The feels flowed through me in Wilder like waves, crashing over me and into me, highs and lows where I rose and fell like the tide. I lived and breathed this book as Wilder won me over quickly, extracting every emotion, stealing every piece of me.
Paxton ‘Pax’ Wilder is the world’s #1 dare devil, chasing that rush with death-defying stunts that would give Evil Knievel a heart attack. Dark-haired, blue-eyed, tall, muscular, and inked, Wilder with his looks, talent, and money, is every woman’s fantasy including MINE! Panty-melting hot with mad passion for life made me melt for this man!!!
“He wasn’t just hot, he was beautiful.”
In a last-ditch effort by his father to boost his grades before they impact his stunt show and team, The Renegades, Wilder enlists in a special study program run on a ship where he is assigned a tutor, the beautiful dark-haired and whiskey-eyed, Eleanor ‘Leah’ Baxter, who needs the money and the push out of her comfort zone to take an adventure and live a little.
When the cautious Leah meets the wild, Paxton, a current crashes through the air, circling them like a cloud of dust, an attraction too powerful to ignore. Fire meets ice. Paxton as a Renegade doing death-defying stunts is always on the top of this game. One meeting with Leah, and he’s almost thrown off track.
“Why did I suspect this slip of a woman was going to be my kryptonite?”
Leah doesn’t want to like the panty-melting hot playboy, but his dirty words bring out her inner wanton woman, whether she wants to admit that chemistry crashing through them or not.
“Look at you, up on my pipe.”
“Your pipe is distracting you from class.”
“It always does.”
Paxton is used to a bevy of beauties worshipping him, lining up to spend one night with the legendary Wilder. One night is all he gives. Leah has him rethinking his ‘one-and-done’ mantra. Leah has him forgetting who he was and focusing on who he is…the man he should be…the man who would deserve a kind, caring, and beautiful woman like Leah.
“I was going to have to work for Lea like I did every single stunt, with a plan and a ton of balls. Half-assed got you hurt. It was all-in or watch from the sidelines. I was all-in.”
Already I WAS ALL IN as this story quickly captured me. Leah vows to not mix business with pleasure. Remain Paxton’s tutor…even his friend…but nothing more. Though the force called Wilder may be one hurricane hitting her with a force she may not be able to fight.
“I knew why everyone got sucked in. He was magnetic, hypnotizing. It wasn’t just the body, the face or the tattoos. He made me feel anything was possible, like there was a whole shiny world waiting for me to step inside and explore. He was everything I wasn’t, but he made me feel like I could be.”
For once, Leah wants to throw caution to the wind and kiss this beautiful and bold man who is making her broken heart beat again.
“The man kissed like he rode—with a single-minded focus that made everything else in the world pale in comparison—and I could only go along for the ride.”
I felt that intense kiss surge from the story straight to me. Oh my wow! Leah has no choice to surrender to this passion that permeates between Paxton and her, pouring off the pages where I felt this passion too. The steam stirred with swoon as I could not stop SWOONING all over this story.
“I want you know that I have you on the same f**king edge you’ve had me dangling on for weeks now, desperate to know how you feel, taste, sound when you’re coming apart.”
I LOVE PAXTON SO MUCH. This man falls from cliffs and everything high, but his heart and body are racing for this woman who has shaken him up more than any scary stunt. Leah grounds Paxton while he sets her free from the walls she’s built to protect herself from a painful past.
“Everything about you scares the s**t out of me.”
“When are you going to understand that’s where life begins? Right at the edge of that fear.”
Leah and Paxton are each other’s air. Each other’s heart. Each other’s hope. Each other’s salvation. Leah is almost ready to take that leap, no longer caring if she falls for she knows that Paxton will catch her. Before Leah can leap and finally live, secrets are exposed. The painful past brings smoke, and they veer off course, possibly sending them into a collision before they’ve even begun the journey.
“This was the decimation of my f**king heart.”
My heart was cut in half as it lay bleeding in the aftermath with hope hanging by a thread for happiness. The feels flowed as did my tears—fast and furiously—as I hoped the race for love had a happy ending.
“I was nothing more than the means to his end.”
Electrifying and enthralling, Wilder is a tale of guts and glory that hit my heart hard, seizing my soul, where I could not help but explode in emotions. This spellbinding and spine-tingling story surged through me like lightning, fast and furiously, where its touch was felt everywhere. OH THE FEELS. My feels were free-falling through this story where I FELT EVERYTHING.
Wilder wielded itself into my heart, hijacking it…hijacking me. I was a prisoner to these passionate pages that pounded that passion straight through me. I was broken. I was breathless. I was branded. I became everything Wilder. Intoxicating and incredible, I could not help but become besotted with this book that blasted my emotions like a cannon, each explosive one making me fall harder and harder for Wilder. I FELL FAST. I FELL HARD. I FELL IN LOVE WITH EVERYTHING WILDER.
I don’t know why I waited so long to meet Rebecca Yarros’ words, but I was a fool to procrastinate. This author is one of my new favorites: those who write from the heart where their hearts are poured into those beautiful and brilliant words. Wilder is not simply a broken and beautiful romance; it’s a story about LIFE AND LIVING. It’s about taking that LEAP OF FAITH…LIVING FOR THE MOMENT…LIVING LIFE NOW. I quickly learned that EVERY WORD MATTERS that Rebecca Yarros writes. Meaningful. Mesmerizing. Magnificent.
Those devastatingly beautiful books that authors pen like paint to a canvas, so vivid and valuable…THOSE ARE THE ONES THAT STEAL MY SOUL AND OWN ME FOR LIFE. Rebecca Yarros is one of those wondrous writers of books that break you, bind you, and brandish themselves to you in a bath of beauty where you’ll remember them forever. Oh did Wilder steal a piece of my soul that may remain stuck in this story forever.
“The best part isn’t the end. It’s what happens in between.”
5 devastatingly beautiful stars
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He’s Paxton Wilder.
Twenty-two-year-old, tattooed, smoking-hot leader of the Renegades.
Five time X Games medalist.
The world is his playground—especially this year—and for the next nine months I’m stuck as his tutor on the Study at Sea program.
He’s too busy staging worldwide stunts for his documentary to get to class.
But if I can’t get him to take academics seriously, I’ll lose my scholarship…if I don’t lose my heart first.
Six unlikely friends on a nine-month cruise with the Study at Sea program will learn that chemistry is more than a subject and the best lessons aren’t taught in the classroom…but in the heart.
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