Title: One With You
Author: Sylvia Day
Publisher/Year:  St Martin’s Press 4/5/16
Length:   480 pages
Series:  Crossfire #5

Overview

Gideon Cross. Falling in love with him was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. It happened instantly. Completely. Irrevocably.

Marrying him was a dream come true. Staying married to him is the fight of my life. Love transforms. Ours is both a refuge from the storm and the most violent of tempests. Two damaged souls entwined as one.

We have bared our deepest, ugliest secrets to one another. Gideon is the mirror that reflects all my flaws … and all the beauty I couldn’t see. He has given me everything. Now, I must prove I can be the rock, the shelter for him that he is for me. Together, we could stand against those who work so viciously to come between us.

But our greatest battle may lie within the very vows that give us strength. Committing to love was only the beginning. Fighting for it will either set us free … or break us apart.

My Thoughts

so, to be clear, i’ve spent the last week re-reading all of the books that preceded this one in the series to make sure that i knew EVERYTHING and didn’t miss a detail, just knowing that we’d get an amazing finale to this series that we’ve all been invested in.  What i have to say is that there were twists and turns that i wasn’t expecting at all, and some of which surprised me to the point where i’m deeply upset, but still pleased with how things turned out.

As you recall, we’re at the point in the series where Gideon and Eva are married, but they aren’t in a great place just yet.  there are people coming at them from every angle, and it seems like they’ll never catch enough of a break to help build a strong relationship together.  If that weren’t enough, it seems like Cary still has his issues w/ his relationships, and all of the supporting cast have more complications coming their way.

So this journey in book 5, we get to see the process in strengthening Gideon and Eva, in the hopes that they can find a good balance personally and professionally.  I feel like we want to see Eva test him more and more, but there’s a huge part of me that really wants to see Gideon catch a break since he’s being pushed further than ever before and it’s not something that can be changed overnight.  Thankfully there’s the trusty Dr Peterson who will help them wade through.

What we do get here is an interesting depth to the relationships of family.  We see that there’s still hate and discontent between Eva and Gideon’s mom – and we can’t tell throughout if that will ever be resolved.  We do however see an interesting change in how the relationship is with Chris – Gideon’s stepfather.  And then how that has an impact on Christopher.  Ireland gets to spend more time with her brother and it’s nice to see how that evolution happens in this book – since we saw the beginnings of that last book.

Then there’s the issues that we see with Stanton, Monica and Eva.  There’s so much complexity there, and the paths that we see each go through in this finale is really impressive – they find a good way to make each other happy without sacrificing too much.

What i do have to say though is that there’s a lot that’s uncovered here.  Someone isn’t who they seem, and that’s something potentially catastrophic.  Then there’s the fact that there were secrets hidden or made up about another supporting character and i wonder what impact that will have in the future.  We see revocations and moves, we see deaths and new relationships, and yet we’re also left with some unanswered questions – not that they have huge impacts on the outcomes of things.

All in all, i’m incredibly pleased with how this series was wrapped up, but quite sad since i really love the level of passion and investment that Eva and Gideon have.  they give you hope on how to manage a tough relationship, yet they don’t sugar coat things.  they have this chemistry that leaps off the pages, and you want to see yourself in each of them, since you realize that they make the other better, stronger.  So on that note, thank you Sylvia Day for giving us the closure to this story that it deserves, and i’ll still always wish that there was more coming.