Review: Kiss to Salvage by Anna B. Doe

Kiss to Salvage by Anna B. Doe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was provided an ARC of this book via the author, all opinions are my own.

This is the second book in the two part duet featuring Jade and Prescott. You need to start with Kiss To Shatter as this picks up where that leaves off. You can read the duet without having read the other books in the series though. Though it isn't necessary, I would recommend reading Nixon and Yasmin's story in Kiss To Forget as Nixon is a big part of this story and the events of that book shapes Jade in many ways for the events in her own books.

This was pretty emotional and dealt with alot of the topics that I had issues with in the first book. We get all of the answers to those loose ends that were left open at the end of the first book and so much more. Jade suspects she has breast cancer, but she's been ignoring it because after watching her mother go through it she knows what it means for her life. She finally gets herself to the doctor and starts talking treatment options. Her road to recovery isn't easy or pretty, but I think the author did a good job humanizing how brutal treatment is for a cancer patient. Every single day is a fight, and we go through it with Jade on her good days and on her really bad ones. Prescott has his own demons to deal with as he has unresolved family trauma and a nagging knee injury as the football season comes to a close. He not only puts immense pressure on himself to perform on the field and in school and his parents put pressure on him to fill the shoes of someone he can never be. He and Jade try to make things work as the season comes to a close and Jade begins treatment, but they continually hurt each other as a protection mechanism. Fortunately for both of them they have a wonderful group of friends to support them through their darkest hours and challenge them when they are being unreasonable.

I thought the author did a really good job wrapping up the loose threads by the time we got to the end of this book. Jade and Prescott are not the same two people they were when we started this journey at the beginning of Kiss to Shatter. Their characters have come so far and grown so much. We got to see them both hit rock bottom before they were able to ask for the help they needed. We also got to see them achieve great things. There were quite a few angsty moments throughout, but they were necessary to move the character development along and I think that was done nicely to get Jade and Prescott to first fight their own needs then fight for each other.

As with the first book in the duet, I would definitely check trigger warnings for this one. You can find them on the author's page here. This book/duet has a lot going on, so I'd steer clear if you are triggered by these things.

Overall I really enjoyed this duet. It is on the longer side and it deals with some heavy subjects, but it is very engaging and doesn't feel long and has good pacing. I'm very much looking forward to Penny's book and what Anna has instore for the Blairwood crew in the future.

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