Title: The Man who Has No Love
Author: Victoria Quinn
Publisher/Year: Victoria Quinn 7/21/20
Length: 178 Pages
Series: Soulless #3
Overview
I finally got Valerie to give Deacon what he wants.
To move to the city so the three of them can be together.
I just have to give her one thing…a penthouse in my building. That means I’ll have to see her, talk to her, and worst of all, assist her. But no matter how difficult she is, her being here means Derek will be here…and that makes it all worth it.
Until she gets between Deacon and I…and rips us apart.
My Thoughts
We all know that nothing is easy and in this story specifically, there’s certainly no ease on the horizon. We know that at the end of book two, Cleo had managed to do the impossible, she had convinced Valerie to move with Derek to New York. The hitch is that it had to be in the same building and she wanted Cleo to wait on her night and day. Cleo of course would do anything for Deacon, so she made it happen.
We know that this is going to get far worse before it gets better. Remember that Valerie thought that Deacon and Cleo were together, and Cleo convinced her that she was with Tucker. So that means that in addition to having to keep up a lie for the sake of Cleo’s job, we have to watch them do it for the sake of Derek and keeping the family as close together as possible.
Things seem to be playing out well. Deacon’s introduced Cleo to his mom as his girlfriend now which is a new step and Margo is thrilled that Deacon’s found happiness. Tucker has moved on with his own girl who seems to be pretty cool and that makes this a well balanced group of characters. Until of course we remember that Valarie is there and she’s vindictive. In every sense of the word.
She doesn’t want to do all the things a caring parent should, taking Derek to his parent teacher conference etc, and has Cleo do it instead. Which frankly is no stress on Cleo given that she loves Derek. What becomes a problem though is one night when Cleo walks into Valerie’s apartment to drop off mail and low and behold, JAKE is there. And not only do we know that Valerie wants Cleo to report back to Deacon that she’s moved on, but we know that there’s intense bad blood between Jake and Cleo.
What happens next is no surprise. Jake tells valerie of his past with Cleo, who then runs to Deacon and shares the information. Which of course causes a huge blow up because Deacon now believes that Cleo isn’t the woman that he thought she was. We watch Cleo’s world crash down.
She’s lost Deacon
She now loses her job because either Jake or Valerie ratted her out to the building
She’s lost all prospect on a happy or even unhappy life in New York and she gets ready to move to Washington.
There are a variety of events that happen that take us on a dark journey with Cleo – watch her downward spiral of her life, and really wish that something else could come along for her. Being a new yorker, i’m still not sure how she lost her apartment after just one month knowing the money that she made, but then again, I don’t know what her expenses were. But she’s forced to move to a studio in a bad neighborhood in Brooklyn before she moves west to where her family is. She has no job prospect because she’s not hireable and the last part of her heart and soul is now gone.
Deacon’s no better to be honest. while his life goes on, part of his heart and soul are dead and it brings out a side of Deacon that we’ve never seen.
It’ll be a wonder who can help solve this mess, if it’s even salvagable and I wonder what that means for the rest of the story. we want Deacon and Cleo to be happy but that ship seems to have sailed. We want Valerie to suffer but she always seems to have the upper hand. I’m not sure where this story will go, but i’m sure going to read book four and find out. Enjoy!