Possessive, Willow Winters

When your heart belongs to one person but your soul belongs to another.  Addison and Daniel have history, but not the kind you think.  There's someone between them, someone neither could ever bear to hurt but do anyway, someone who paid the ultimate price for misplaced love.  And five years later, hearts are still broken, souls still belong to a person they think they could never have, and grief is an ever-present companion.  It'll take more than confessions and passion to bring Daniel and Addison to a place of love and healing, especially if the danger that surrounds them succeeds in ruining everything Daniel holds dear.

Daniel is dark, tortured by grief and self-loathing, and hopelessly in love with Addison.  None of those things combine very well so we get a lot of anger and frustration from beginning to end with him.  I do love him, though.  His fears, obsessions, struggles, and love all make him someone worth saving, someone worth loving, someone worth redemption.  He carries a lot on his shoulders and the love and passion he feels for Addison, that he's always felt, gets him through dark times.  And unfortunately it puts the emotional ball of everything in Addison's broken hands.

Addison has always craved Daniel.  She didn't know him enough to love him, I feel, but there was potential there that was trapped by her obligation and love for Tyler, Daniel's younger brother.  Tyler was the epitome of good in their dysfunctional home and he saw someone worthy of love and family in Addison.  His tragedy broke her.  Carrying the guilt of that moment for years she ran from their home and ran from grief.  But you can't outrun your pain that way.  When all her emotional progress is threatened by one brief encounter with Daniel she knows she has to stop running.

I don't actually have a lot of love for her.  I feel great amounts of sympathy for her and want her to find healing and peace with Daniel but she gets in her own way so often that I got really, really tired of her martyring herself on her own altar of guilt.  I can understand why she does what she does and even for how long she does it.  That's not the issue.  It's the knee-jerk reaction to Daniel's confession that breaks my heart along with his.  Her unwillingness to use her head along with her heart instead of accepting what she already knows about herself, Daniel, and their entire sordid situation is incredibly disappointing.

The ending felt a bit rushed.  I adored and felt so sad at Tyler's words and am incredibly interested in Carter's story coming out in May, Merciless.  Aside from those two things I didn't exactly feel any kind of true resolution between Daniel and Addison.  There was a huge dramatic moment in the alley and then the homecoming but no true settling.  They had one conversation that was still full of pregnant pauses, unshared hearts, and so much pain.  If the angst closer to the beginning were truncated a little and then more attention was given to Addison and Daniel finding light at the end of the tunnel, not necessarily reaching it, but at least more description of their determination to face it together and head toward it I would have been more satisfied.  As it was, I did like the story and am hopeful for them.  I hope to see more of them in the periphery of Carter's story so they can provide him support for his own dark, tense journey to his own love and redemption.

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