Title: Souls Unfractured
Series: Hades Hangmen #3
Author: Tillie Cole
Age group: New Adult
Genre: Dark Contemporary Romance
Release date: 11th August 2015
GOODREADS LINK
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22107214-souls-unfractured
BLURB
"For fractured souls are like magnets.
Drawn to collide into an impossible bliss…"
Labeled a ‘Cursed’ woman of Eve from birth, Maddie has endured nothing but pain and repression at the hands of The Order’s most abusive elder, Moses. Now living with her sister in The Hangmen’s secluded compound, finally, Maddie, is free. Free from the suffocating faith she no longer believes in. Free from endless years of physical and mental torment.
Just… free…
At age twenty-one, the timid and shy Maddie is content to live within the confines of her new home—safe from the outside world, safe from harm and, strangely, protected by the Hangmen’s most volatile member; the heavily pierced and tattooed, Flame.
Flame.
The man who ceaselessly watches over her with his midnight dark and searing eyes. The man who protects her with a breath-taking intensity. And the man who stirs something deep within her numbed heart.
But when circumstances conspire for Flame to need HER help, Maddie bravely risks it all for the broken man who has captivated her fragile soul.
The Hangmen’s most infamous member, Flame, is ruled by one thing—anger. Plagued by haunting demons from his past, an all-consuming rage, and isolated by an abhorrent hatred of being touched, Flame's days are filled with suffocating darkness, pierced only by a single ray of light—Maddie. The shy, beautiful woman he cannot purge from his thoughts. The woman he has an overwhelming need to possess…
... the only person who has ever been able to touch him.
Flame’s mission in life is to protect Maddie, to keep her safe. Until a trigger from his troubled past sends him spiraling into madness, trapping him in the deepest recesses of his disturbed mind.
His Hangmen brothers fear that Flame is beyond saving.
His only hope of salvation: Maddie and her healing light.
Souls Unfractured Excerpt
I couldn’t take my eyes off his face. I had never looked at men. After what I had endured at the hands of males, I could not think of them as handsome. I had given no thought to the matter at all. I simply did not think like that. I had never felt butterflies in my stomach. I had never felt my heart flutter, had never felt myself losing my very breath. When Lilah and Mae would talk of Ky and Styx, when they would blush just describing their love’s faces, eyes, lips, I did not comprehend.
But standing here, over Flame, right now, staring at his anguished face—his sharp features: slightly crooked nose, full lips, dark short beard, and those soulful eyes, those incredibly long black lashes—a feeling previously unknown to me bloomed in my heart, filling me with light. With an incredible heat. This close, I felt a tension spark between us. I felt something magnetic.
I… I wanted him as my own. In this moment, seeing the man who had become the center of my world, breaking, I wanted nothing more than to save him. To gift him the peace he so richly deserved, even if it meant sacrificing my newly-awakened heart in the process.
On a loud hiss, Flame’s body stiffened. My grip tightened on the handle of the knife. It felt like a ton weight in my hand, but I knew what I had to do. For Flame, I told myself, You must do this for Flame.
Steadying my shaking grip, I raised the blade, leaving it suspended it in the air. I inhaled deeply, then looked down at Flame. His beautiful eyes stalked me. With tears filling my eyes, I whispered, “Flame… I know you are lost right now, but I want to save you. I want to save you as you have so often saved me.” I swallowed the lump clogging my throat and continued. “I know you want eternal peace, but… but… I cannot… I cannot take your life.” Tears streamed from my eyes, but I lowered my mouth to a few inches from his ear. “I know the flames pain you greatly. And I know you live with pain. I know you no longer want to live. I…” I sniffed back my emotions as Flame became eerily still. “I have been there too. I have felt the urge to fade, to never wake again. But then something happened to me. Someone happened to me… You.”
Flame’s erratic breathing blew against the hair falling over my face, but he did not move. His body was completely and utterly still.
Rearing back slightly, I searched his glazed eyes and prayed to the Almighty that he was seeing me. That he could hear my words. I itched to run my fingers through his hair, like I had seen Mae do to Styx, but I held back.
“I have watched you, Flame. I have watched you as you have watched me. And I have seen you free the flames. I have counted with you from my window as you have administered the slashes to your flesh, releasing what you believe runs within you.” My legs began to shake as I lifted the knife, and lined up the blade over his arm. “I will not take your life, but I will help you release the flames. I will stay here with you, in this room, until you come back to me.”
My Review
I am a mess! My heart has been ripped from my chest, crushed to an emotional pulp and then oh so delicately placed right back where it belongs. And I loved Every. Damn. Minute. Of. It!
*Sigh* I can barely find the words to describe just how much I am in love with this series. I was left captivated as I devoured the Story of Styx and Mae in Book One – It Ain’t Me Babe and then hooked completely as I held my breath and watched on as Ky and Lilah fought against the odds in Heart Recaptured for their chance to be together. But I must admit there was one Hangman in particular that I was desperate to know the back-story of. Yep you guessed it.
Mother f*cking Flame!
Souls Unfractured is Book 3 in The Hades Hangmen Series and is the much anticipated story of Flame and Maddie! I knew before I picked it up, that this was going to be one dark, seriously f*cked up read. Book one and two introduced us to a man so savage, so disturbingly unhinged that you felt unnerved just reading about him. There was no way to go into this story, without knowing that what you were about to read was going to be disturbing. But I don’t think there was anything that could have prepared me to discover the absolute heart shattering, bile inducing truth about what had happened to him, to shape him into the man he had grown into.
I am in awe of Tillie Cole and her amazing writing style. She has poured her heart and soul into every scene, making it so effortless to slip into the lives and shoes of the characters, allowing us the live and breath every heart breaking moment as the story of Flame and Maddie unfolds.
Maddie – Mae’s little sister and one of the accused Cursed Sisters of Eve. Her entire life, starting as just a tiny child has been one filled with the absolute worst kinds of abuse and torture. Fear and numbness her only emotions, until the day she is rescued along side Mae and Lilah by the brothers of the Hades Hangmen MC, and comes face to face with Flame. After discovering he is the one responsible for putting to death the man accountable for the majority of the torture she has suffered, she pledges her undying gratitude to him, embracing him and triggering an unbreakable bond between them from that point on. Withdrawn and fearful of the strange new world outside of the commune however, she seeks refuge with her sister Lilah inside of Styx apartment, unwilling to venture outside, her only source of comfort and safety is watching the wild tattooed man named Flame as he paces relentlessly, fiercely protecting her outside of her apartment window.
Flame – It’s no secret that we all know that Flame is all kinds of messed up. The incessant self-mutilation, the untamed rage, his inability and fear of being touched, he lets off an Aura of a man possessed. Except with Maddie. After their shared moment at the commune during the sisters’ rescue, Maddie finds herself with a 24/7 guard dog named Flame. Flames only goal is to protect her, to prevent anything or anybody from ever making her scream again. To lay down his life for this small, green eyed girl that dared to touch him that day and didn’t come to harm when he touched her back.
Two damaged souls, unable to love or be loved. Unable to touch or be touched but drawn to each other with a bond that no one but them can understand. With the demons that these two are carrying around with them, you just know that when the metaphorical shit hits the fan it’s going to be nuclear. And god damn was it ever! When an incident opens the floodgates, unleashing hell onto Flame, everyone fears he is lost. Unable to handle the thought of losing the only person who makes her feel safe, nothing will stop Maddie from trying to save him like he has always been there to save her.
This story was brutal but so, so beautiful at the same time. To be allowed to see another side to Flame, a sweet undying loyalty for this woman that he idolizes with almost a painful innocence spawn from an inability to believe that anyone could ever love him or his damned soul. Through this entire book I could not get the song Behind Blue Eyes out of my head. Misunderstood, lost and scared, it sums up Flame perfectly. And Maddie, after everything she has been through I honestly believe that she is, by far the strongest of the Cursed Women. While struggling with her own demons her unshakable belief that Flame can be saved even when she doubts the same of herself. Ugh! It got me right in the heart!
What else can I say – An Amazing book, brilliantly written! And it has left me salivating for its next instalment.
★★☆ 5 Heart Shattering Stars ☆★★
Reviewed by Carly Carter
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AUTHOR BIO
Tillie Cole is a Northern girl through and through. She originates from a place called Teesside on that little but awesomely sunny (okay I exaggerate) Isle called Great Britain. She was brought up surrounded by her English rose mother — a farmer’s daughter, her crazy Scottish father, a savagely sarcastic sister and a multitude of rescue animals and horses.
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