"Sugar, Jules and I had run for our lives. Only our shadows had followed us. And no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't outpace them."
All-around bad boy, and twenty-five-year-old heir to the Jameson fortune, Tommy Jameson, knows three things:
- His family is disappointed in him.
- Overcoming his addictions won't necessarily crush his vices.
- He is wildly in love with Sugar Scarborough, a girl who is dealing with her own addictions and an insatiable need to please.
Danger sends Tommy, Sugar and their friend, Julian Fitzpatrick, a heavily medicated, socially dysfunctional genius, fleeing from Green Willow Recovery Center. Now, together, they will face the outside world and uncover a horrifying mystery while being forced to confront their inner demons
4 out of 5 stars
I loved that this story was told entirely from Tommy’s POV. And it’s also told as mostly a flashback which had me waiting with baited breath to see what caused Tommy to be in jail and how things were going to play out.
The relationships between Tommy, Julian and Sugar were amazing to watch develop - even if Tommy & Sugar exhausted me at times. Though they were all in the same treatment facility, their needs were much different. Tommy & Sugar were mostly trying to get over addictions while Julian was heavily medicated and emotionally unavailable.
Tommy is hesitant to share with the others in the facility - especially in group sessions, but he does make strides thru the novel and one scene leads him and Dr Kirkendall to discuss the benefits of time - not just therapy:
“Sometimes the best therapy is just doing the stuff that makes you smile, the stuff that reminds you why it’s good to be alive.”
I really felt like this book spoke to me. I have never had an addiction like Tommy & Sugar. I’m not heavily medicated like Julian. But something in the words and the character development really made me feel this book. There were times when the descriptions that Tommy used in his head made me think just like him:
I wanted this like a flame wanted gasoline, but I wanted to experience every second, to feel every stroke, to hear every soft groan of pleasure. I wanted SUgar to know that I hadn’t just wanted this, I’d wanted her, every fucking inch of her.
Ms. Oliver did a wonderful job of creating characters that we wanted to better understand and wanted to see succeed. Even though I knew from the beginning that Tommy was in jail and about to be released, I couldn't’ imagine what he’d done to end up there. The way the story played out was absolutely wonderfully done. This paragraph (which I left part of out to avoid spoiling the novel for others) really made this novel for me. It was simple and yet exactly what I wanted to read:
For that time, with Sugar’s lips pressed against my mouth, it was easy to forget everything. Sugar was all I needed to be happy.
I would recommend this book to others who enjoy a little suspense and aren’t all about sex in a book because though there was some, this book was much more about the characters and how they interacted than about the sex.
** READ THE FIRST TWO CHAPTERS OF THAT TIME WITH SUGAR HERE **
* $50 AMAZON GIFTCARD*
a Rafflecopter giveaway
0 comments