Title: Aftershock
Author:  Sylvia Day
Publisher/Year:  Harlequin 3/11/14
Length: 118 Pages
Series: Afterburn & Aftershock

Overview

When it came to playing games, my lover Jax was a master strategist. He pulled strings behind the closed doors of D.C.’s most powerful political players, and somehow still found time to nearly sideline my career. What he didn’t know was that when I didn’t like the rules, I threw them out and made my own. I wasn’t going to let Jax get away with it. I wasn’t going to let him get away at all.

I loved Jax enough that it was impossible to give up. Jax loved me enough that giving up was the only end he’d consider. He didn’t think I could swim with the sharks. It was entirely my pleasure to show him that I’d already dived in…

My Thoughts

You know how it is when you’re waiting endlessly and anxiously for a book to come out that you forget at the last minute that it’s coming out that day – just to get a friendly reminder email in the AM to download?  Well, that’s what happened here.  Mind you I’m still trying to figure out how it slipped my mind from one week to the next.

In this 2nd installment we are reunited with Gia and Jax, as they are trying to sort out what they can be together, now that they’ve realized what they are to each other.  There’s a line in the book ‘Loving each other was never our problem’ – and that comes from Jax.  There’s something to be said about having the strong and powerful male lead admit that his fault isn’t in loving someone, it’s in how he can make it work.

We follow the journey of these two, while Gia is still trying to make her professional dreams come true since they were uprooted in Afterburn, while figuring out what it is that Jax feels he needs to protect her from.

In the great style of Sylvia Day’s writing, we get a steamy contemporary story of a duo that is strong enough apart, but even stronger together.  One thing that she does well is that she creates these lead characters that aren’t fragile – they have their own successes and yet they want to find a way to bring their stories together.  We also get a nice mix of passion, family tension and motivation with the dynamics included.

Gia’s family continues to play a strong role in what Jax means in her life and that’s a trait that i really appreciate.  She’s not an island, and we get the sense of where her strength comes from and why she fights as she does to help smooth the path with Jax.

The direction that this story takes us is one of love and power.  You have a feeling of where things will end up with the couple, but you don’t know ‘where’ they will end up.  Will Gia have to give up some of her conquests at work because of things that Jax has done and continues to do?  Will Jax’s political background mean that she has to change her dream?  Will Gia get the Jax back that she knew in Vegas?  Well, i guess if you want to find out, you’ll have to read- and luckily this is a page turner that you’ll be able to get through in one straight pass.  Enjoy!