A Blogger's Bookshelf: 'Too Far' Series

“I had fallen too far. I was in love with Rush Finlay.”  - Blaire; "Fallen Too Far" by Abbi Glines

Pfft, back of the queue Blaire.
Hey everybody, I'm back from my little exam-hiatus, and bring a series of books with me today that I read somewhere at the start of the blur of exams! They're the "Too Far" books, by Abbi Glines- and there are four released, though I've only read the main three, which are (in this order): "Fallen Too Far", "Never Too Far" and "Forever Too Far". The fourth book came out in the beginning of May, and is called "Rush Too Far" but I'll mention that one just a little bit later!
These books are actually a part of a larger series known as "Rosemary Beach", but it's only really the location and characters that are the same, so don't feel obliged to read them all (I didn't- but I'm sure they're just as awesome!)

  

I'm actually not going to take you through the plots of all these books either. Instead, I'm going to introduce you to all of the characters and the main themes from the first book- I don't want to spoil anything for you!

First of all then- firstly introduced in "Fallen Too Far" are the main flock of characters: Blaire, Rush, Bethy, Nan, Grant, and Woods. Starting with the main female character- and narrator- Blaire is a 19 years young naive, delicate little character. Yet she's the kind of girl who isn't too afraid to show somebody what she's made of- she even keeps a gun in her truck for emergencies... So don't mess with her. She's the kind of relatable female lead, who is so sweet and innocent that you just want to wrap up in a bundle of blankets and not let anyone hurt her, but considering the things you learn about her past along the book's course, you realise that you've kind of missed the time to do this, but you want to make sure that she doesn't get hurt anymore. As a narrator, her voice is great to have as it describes all of her emotions without making them all over-the-top. She's just amazing- a part of me wants to be in her shoes, yet a part of me doesn't at the same time.

I think that brings us on quite nicely to Rush. He's a bit (ahem, a lot) of a playboy, a son of a rock star and pretty much everything that you want to keep away from Blaire. But of course, this being a romance novel, that was never going to happen, was it? Oh. And Rush also happens to be Blaire's step-brother... Which, personally, is kinda creepy. Sure, they aren't related but every other step-sibling in the book is treated as that- siblings. So why aren't Blaire and Rush the same? Putting all that slightly weirdness aside, they actually make a pretty awesome couple, despite their differences and their attempt to avoid each other in that sense.

The other characters develop a lot more during the other books of the 'Too Far' series (and can also be read about more in the other 'Rosemary Beach' books). One of my favourites would have to be Bethy, who's this amazing fun-lover whom receives a few life-lessons from Blaire about treading carefully and also develops into Blaire's best friend. Another would be Woods, who starts out as kind of needy in the sense that he needs to have Blaire for himself, but he finally lets go a little and actually just supports her as this really nice guy. (Dare I say it- I may like Woods more than Rush...)
Rush also has a 'brother' (step-brother!) called "Grant" whom actually sees Blaire first but she doesn't care so much. He's pretty adorable too, but not much happens with him until the third book, and it's a pretty major plot twist that I was so not expecting.

No novel would be complete without a female-dog character though, would it? Inset Nan into the equation- who is Rush's little sister and pretty much requires every single drop of attention from him as humanly possible. Give the guy a break woman!! She grows jealous very easily of any attention any girl gets from him, and especially towards Blaire for reasons that I just can't spill. I want to though, I really really do! Nan is the character in the book that you will just completely one hundred percent hate from the first page she is mentioned. And just to make this clear- you will never hate Rush directly- you will only hate Nan for what she does to him.

All that being said, these books bring some pretty steamy stuff to the table! When I first spotted it on Goodreads, I expected a cute, innocent, almost-forbidden, slightly wrong romance novel between a step-brother and sister. But wow, I was so wrong. Forget innocent- the first book brings with it some hot, steamy unexpected scenes in just the right places, and it doesn't end with the first book either. It continues all the way through the three, along with many twists and turns featuring the characters above and a few extra thrown in too.

The most recent book here- "Rush Too Far" is a book from the opposite point of view- Rush's. As I said earlier, I'm yet to read it, and I actually doubt that I will. I think part of what made these books so rarely believable was Blaire's voice whilst she was narrating. But saying that, the idea of seeing things from Rush's point of view is so tempting... though I still recommend reading the original "Fallen Too Far" first.

So, finally, I conclude by giving you all a warning. A warning that these books are addictive. Despite doing miles worth of revision every day whilst reading these books, the first took me a mere 4 days to read the 300 pages it contained and left a pretty darn massive cliffhanger- forcing you to move on to the second. "Never Too Far" is relatively shorter, with only 193 pages, meaning it only took me 2 days to read from start to finish... And despite not having quite as much of a cliffhanger at the end, I moved on to the third one pretty quickly, which took only 1 day to devour the 292 pages.
In short, yes, these books are very addictive- read at your own cost!
You can snatch them all from Amazon in a variety of formats, and probably a few other retailers too! But you should definitely spare a few days of your time to read these. Definitely.

And that's all from me for today! Let me know if you have read these books, or plan on reading them after seeing this! I love reading all your comment, so don't forget to leave one!
See you all on Wednesday!
o7
~Rachel xxx