Ride or Die #2 by Cee Cee Riley

 Ride or Die #2 by Cee Cee Riley

Blurb:

Love can either destroy you, or bring you back to life.
Dom, Casa & Harlow
1992

Casa only cares for two things in this life: his club—the Devil’s Highwaymen—and sex. That is until he meets Harlow. She’s feisty, passionate, and doesn’t fall for his usual charms. She’s perfect for him…but she belongs to someone else.

Harlow is broken; she has been for a long time. With nowhere to go, and worse, no one to go to, she’s become a clubslut for the West Side Bangers. That is until a chance meeting with her old friend and former lover, Dom, brings their worlds colliding together once more.

Dom is on a one-way train to hell; the guilt of losing his soulmate is killing him—but he can’t tell anyone about it. That is until he finds a brief respite from his suffering in the form of Harlow, the woman whose heart he once broke.

With all three set on their own self-destructive paths, they’ve only got one chance to make things right—but only if they can learn to forgive, and then to love again.

The funny thing about love is, it’s both painless and painful, and not even death can end the suffering.



It wasn't easy for me to rate this book because, yeah, I guess, the problem is that biker clubs tend to be a bit ....rougher and less sophisticated than drawing rooms and kindergartens. The lifestyle that goes along with the whole biker club thing is hard and brutal and the women are not always respected - to put it mildly.
Jumping right in the middle of a gang war though, well, let's just say that there were many situations where I was really shocked about the things going on. Guns and fists are often used and the guys are as alpha as they come. And, if I am allowed this little innuendo - they tend to "come" rather often as well.

Okay, I really loved Harlowe and I would have loved to tell her to send all those guys to hell but unfortunately, she never listened to me... The guys, as in Casa and Dom, mainly, were not as easy to love or even to like as Harlowe. Dominant a......idiots, afraid to love, always playing (and failing) at playing the knight in shining armor only to hurt her even more the next moment and after everything hat had happened, I just wanted for Harlowe to find a place where she belonged and where she was loved.
The guys, well, ....I understand where they were coming from and why I it was so difficult for them to accept the things happening to them and I really understood that they had a problem dealing with their feelings but the way they lashed out at others, especially at Harlowe, in order to protect themselves, was unforgivable in my eyes. Every time I thought that they had finally redeemed themselves, it happened again and I really hated them for the things they did and the things they said when that happened.

Nevertheless, despite my problems with the club scene itself and its characters, this book is really well written, intense and just one of those books that draw you in and don't let you go before you've read it all. 

★★★★