What is the book about?
Brooke is a dedicated athlete, who worked throughout her adolescence to achieve her dream of completing in the Olympics. Unfortunately, during the trails she, her ACL tore and she has say goodbye to the Olympics. Brooke decides to pursue a career in Sports Therapy.
One evening, her best friend drags her along to an underground boxing match, where she catches the eye of Remington Tate, a champion boxer who is known to be a rule breaker. Brooke finds watching Remy fit in the ring, unbelieveably hot and when she walks away from the ring, Remy runs after her (after KO his opponent in the ring) as he has to know her name. The next time they meet, Remy offers Brooke a job as his Sports Therapist, meaning that Brooke will have to leave her home in Seattle behind, and travel the country with Remy and his team. The only problem... Brooke doesn't believe in sleeping with the "boss", and she struggles with her desires in an attempt to maintain a professional relationship.
What did I like about this book?
The question is not what I liked, more what was there not to like?? The book didn't jump into this instant love rubbish that seems to be what most authors jump to straight away. Brooke and Remy have an insane lust and desire to be consumed by each other, however they build up to love once they really start to get to know each other more, and to me, that is a realistic way that love develops between two people.
My favourite thing about this book is the writing! Katy Evans writes so beautifully, and I could not put the book down. Evans took me on a journey through her words and I even ended up falling in love with Remy's character. He is so passionate and sweet. He would do anything for Brooke and I think she feels the same way about him.
These are some of my favourite quotes from the book, but there are so many ones that I loved, according to my Kindle, everyone else seemed to love her words as well!
I also really liked that when the author talked about Remy's struggle with bipolar disorder, she showed all three sides to him, the normal Remy, "speedy Remy" (highs) and "black" Remy (lows). Other books that I have read with characters that suffer from bipolar disorder, the author just shows the lows which just makes you not like the character and subsequently, it puts you off the book. However, Real shows the various sides to bipolar disorder and also showed that it doesn't control your life constantly. In the book, Remy had long periods where he was normal.
What did I not like about the book?
Throughout the book, Brooke illustrates how much she loves Remy and cannot live without him. When Remy tells Brooke that he has bipolar disorder, he is worried that she will leave him when things get bad, however she is adamant that nothing he does will make her leave him. So towards the end of the book when Remy goes black for the first time, what does Brooke do?? SHE LEAVES HIM!!! That made me so angry with her because she swore to him that she would never leave him. I do understand her reasoning for leaving him when she did because it hurt her to see him get hurt, and she thought that he had just given up on them. I don't want to give too much away about the book because I want you to read without knowing what is going on, so I have left out some of the information that leads up to her leaving.
To be fair this one thing that I didn't like about the book, was not something that put me off the book at all. It is a slight character flaw with Brooke, but that's life right? Nobody is perfect or does the right things all the time so can't really begrudge Brooke for it, can I? And I am always going on about making them more realistic, so I really shouldn't complain...
Overall, the book it great and well worth the read. And good news for those who have read the book and enjoyed it, because there the second book in the Real, Raw and Ripped Series, titled Mine is set to be released in June 2013!! This is according to Goodreads, so I am not sure how reliable the date is, but I am hoping it is correct as I want to read more about the god that is Remy.
