Dark, dramatic, and gritty!

Shadows You Left is a sultry, character-driven romance that takes you on a journey into the lives of Erik and River, two tormented and tortured souls who together discover the comfort, solace, and unconditional love they each need to battle all their internal demons.

The prose is poetic and enticing. The characters are consumed, damaged, and impulsive. And the plot told from alternating POVs is a somber tale of friendship, family, addiction, hope, patience, violence, grief, heartbreak, and the art of tattooing.

I have to admit this was a really tough one for me. There is no doubt that Sierra and Brooke can write a beautiful story about unconventional relationships that push people to understand and accept that there is no one norm when it comes to loving another person. And even though I am confident that some readers will absolutely love the tragic gloominess of Shadows You Left, unfortunately for me it was a tad too long and a little too stormy for me to enjoy it as much as I would have liked.

This was a difficult read for me, not just because of the drugs and the fighting--although there were copious amounts of both--but because a big part of the storyline was Erik unknowingly triggering River's unresolved issues with his alcoholic mother.

Both of these characters are very broken when they come into each other's lives. River is a tattooist whose mother has been trying to contact him (again) for money for her rent, but she swears that she's sober! And Erik...

Erik has been running from his past for longer than the span of this story. Currently that running has taken him as far as Seattle, where he is a bartender by night, and a cage fighter by... later in the night.

When these two meet each other, they fall into bed together with the intent that it'll just be this one time. Erik is demiromantic, and he's aware that he doesn't tend to fall for people easily, or at all, especially after Lee.

And yet something keeps pulling these two together over and again, despite the fact that, as I said, for the majority of this book until either of them start talking, they are not good for each other. River knows that, but Erik just believes he's not good for anyone, including himself.

It's a hard hurt/comfort novel to read, but I feel like it ended on a good point for both characters. A 'happily for now' if not 'happily ever after'.

I found Shadows You Left to be a nice and rather slow read that took a while for me to really become engaged.

Content warnings include: alcoholism, drug abuse, violence, emotional abuse and gaslighting, semi-explicit sex on-page that occasionally gets quite rough, anxiety, panic attack; mentions of death through overdose, eating disorder, child abuse, cheating.

I expected it to be quite dark and gritty, but for me it mostly... wasn't?
Shadows You Left deals with quite a few heavy topics, with both River and Erik bringing their own baggage and pasts they would rather keep buried deep. But for me, the book was mostly about these two guys falling deeply in love, so fast and hard they barely recognize it (and sure as heck don't acknowledge it at first.)
Despite the rough edges of their lives, they go on wonderfully cute dates and so many scenes were absolutely adorable and outright fluffy!

I was fascinated by the way this book handled sex scenes - because Erik and River have quite a lot of sex. Yet I wouldn't label it erotica, given that the sex is often... barely described? The book doesn't shy away from explicity or details, but it usually focuses rather on how the characters feel during or after the fact, or focus on one specific moment, rather than going through the entire scene second by second. It worked very well here, and I enjoyed this style.

The writing style in general is very beautiful. It's almost poetic at times, without becoming flowery or over-the-top, and I loved the acute, lyrical metaphors and describtions that were always right on point, leaving an ache from their precision but also inspiring awe from their beauty.
Despite the writing, it took me a while to really get into it. I was never bored, but the first 50% or so felt sort of aimless. Only after about two thirds in I really got invested in Erik and River and wanted to read on about them at all costs - not that reading ever was a chore; it was always pleasant and flowed well even before that point, but it didn't leave me itching to read more at first.

Most of the darker themes of the book were a constant in the background. I loved how they were all handled in the end, and how their not-always-resolution came to pass. Here love or a relationship doesn't magically make everything sunshine and rainbows, and no false promises about never hurting another are made. Instead common ground is found and fought for.

I also liked how casually the character's queerness was handled. Almost all characters are queer: River is bi and Erik is demiromantic, and there are more queer side characters.
Speaking of, I also adored those.
Both Erik and River have respective circles, siblings, friends, coworkers, who take up space in their lives and are more than just a side sentence here and there. They play big roles not just in their lives but for the plot as well. I loved Desiree and Cheyenne especially, and Jadis and Pax intrigued me with what was hinted at of the things going on with them.

Overall a very pleasant read that I enjoyed greatly. I mean, it has pretty detailed discussion and describtions of dragon tattoos, and what's not to like about that?!

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you NetGalley!!

Erik is a cage fighter, moving from cage to cage, city to city... Cage fighting is how he controls HIS pain.
River is ...soft.. quiet.. living a simple routine life. They're both trying to run from a shadowed past, they didn't expect to find a relationship so intense or complicated. but here they are.

There were some errors in the text, but that sometimes happens with ARCS. ONce that is fixed, i'd be confidant in giving this book five stars. The romance is beautiful and raw.

“But River saw now, so clearly, that Erik was broken…perhaps still breaking. He was the light and the dark, the chiaroscuro of poison and loss and anger, and under it all, a terrible need for love. Perhaps it was ego, then, because River wanted Erik to want love. Specifically, his.”*

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Running from his past, fighting, and drugs are all Erik knows until he meets his sexy new tattoo artist. River is intrigued by the enigmatic man in his chair who collects dragon tattoos for every fight he wins. Their chemistry is undeniable, and soon they are engaged in an intense carnal relationship. Both men hold their emotional wounds close, but revealing all their broken parts is the only way to make their love last.

SHADOWS YOU LEFT includes a refreshing cast of non-binary, LGBT, and polyamorous characters. The subject matter is a mix of the darkness of addiction and death and violence, along with the light of friendship in the form of people who stand by those they care for no matter what.

The emotion this modern day love story evokes is raw and real. Seattle, with its forests and food trucks, provides the perfect setting. This story delivers the feels, while the dragon tattoos provide the kind of magic one can find in a rainstorm or an art exhibit.

Thanks to NetGalley and Entangled Publishing for the opportunity to experience this book in advance of its release.

*Please note that my review is based on uncorrected text.

3.5 stars rounded up

The first thing that drew me to this book was that one of the characters did yoga since I do yoga as well. Once I began reading, I did truly love the characters. Both River and Erik were really well developed and I could understand the reasons behind their thoughts and actions and feelings. It gave a really intimate tinge to the book. I really liked that the both River and Erik actually began communicating and putting in the work for a relationship instead of just holding in all the things that needed to be said out loud. It made their relationship more believable, despite the relatively short timespan.
However, I do agree with the other reviews in that the book was perhaps a little too long. There were sections that were very verbose, and these were typically the angsty sections, which made the overall feel of the book a little depressing. This isn't necessarily bad, but it will definitely bother some people. Also, I read this book at a time when everything was really hectic in my life, so the slower pace and character-driven storyline was a positive for me, but for the reader wanting thrill and fast-paced reading, this is not the right book.
One thing that I really felt was a weakness and a lost opportunity for the book was that since so much time was spent on Erik and River's characters, that space was taken away from the secondary characters like Desiree, Cheyenne, Pax, Jadis, Val, Bev, and Steve. They came across as really one dimensional and it almost felt like they had a role to play for the story and beyond that, there was nothing to them. This made them seem almost like they weren't real. It was especially difficult to get over this since I felt like there was so much potential in the side characters, if more time had been spent on fleshing them out. Also, there were a few things that felt unresolved at the end, like (view spoiler)

Overall, I really enjoyed the main characters in this book and their development. It is a slower book and more character driven, so future readers should keep that in mind.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

The thing about this book is that it has what I love about Taylor Brooke's books- their great characters. I've read one other thing by Jude Sierra, which I dnf'd due to boredom. I find that I don't connect with Jude Sierra's plots, and as a whole I rarely like character driven romances. Romance driven maybe, plot drive definitely, but character driven contemporaries in general is something I rarely enjoy.

This book just wasn't for me.

The plot and the characters were fine, and I liked what the authors were trying to do. I just found it hard to keep in the story, I just couldn't connect.

3* Struggled with this - Erik was almost anti-lead material, and River had no backbone.

I nearly DNFd this book 3 times, and it was a stop-start read for me that took a couple of days, rather than my normal couple of hours. The writing was decent and I couldn't have said that it was 2 authors writing, but the leads had too many issues and weren't really lead material.

I never really got to know Erik despite the little hints given about his past. He seemed to be running from his past, but he also didn't like himself and had no goals, no aims, and the bare-knuckle fighting he was into was brutal. For a lead of a novel to be an out-and-out drug taker, and stupid enough to boot to be doing this before a fight, when all his senses could be impaired, was a no-brainer. And, all of this at only 24yo? And yes, he had contributed to his 17yo friend's death, and yes, he did have to have a conscience about it, but I didn't really read remorse in him, simply running from his past...At the same time, how do you live with yourself after something like that? Live the best life you can, do the best you can towards others? Nope, Erik was in 'me, me, me' mode.

River couldn't find his backbone, either with his mum or his well-meaning but rather bossy sister. Frankly, I couldn't understand why he persisted with Erik who was so moody, so closed-off and so selfish at times, and kind of kept River dangling at times.

It is readable, but it tries too hard to be too angsty and with leads the age of these guys, it didn't really work for me. And, when does a guy come out with, 'I'm demiromantic'? Too planted, sorry.

ARC courtesy of Entangled Publishing and NetGalley, for my reading pleasure.

DNF @ 63%

I may come back to this but I doubt it, and this is definitely a case of “it’s me, not you.” I <I>really</I> wanted to like this book, but the whole time I was reading it was hovering at 3 stars, but it just got to a point I couldn’t take it anymore.

Shadows You Left is about River, a tattoo artist with an alcoholic mother and dealing with related trauma, and Erik, a cage fighter dealing with his own history and past death of one of his best friends. They had nodded heads at one another when Erik went to Styx to get tattoos after winning a fight, but when his usual artist moves he goes to River and the attraction between them is immediate.

I liked that the book is separated into parts on the dragons Erik gets tattooed, and their meanings shows a gradual shift in his self-image, in a sense. Erik sees himself as poison and broken, and River tries to show him that despite being broken in some ways, he isn’t just poison. I also really liked the on-page mentions of Erik’s demiromanticism and it’s a unique exploration of his feelings developing for River because it feels too fast. In the 63% I had read, only like two months had passed and already River had a drawer at Erik’s apartment. I also really appreciated that, while Erik kinda uses his demiromanticism as a shield, it’s not an issue in the development of the relationship of Erik and River.

Like, this book definitely had potential and I obviously liked elements, so why is it a DNF for me? Reading this book felt like my brain was being painted in giant swaths of grey. You know how the scenes in shows like Game of Thrones have lots of shadow and sometimes hard to make out what’s going on? That’s how this book felt to me, like the shadows inside Erik and River were weighing down my reading experience. Not only that, but there are several scenes where Erik uses drugs, including cocaine, on page. It made me really uncomfortable, and I’m all for messy characters having unhealthy coping mechanisms, and this behavior is kinda addressed as unhealthy, but at the same time it felt very tied to Erik’s cage fighting persona(?) and the people he surrounded himself with, even if they were more friend-of-a-friend, encouraged and even provided Erik’s supply.

I think this book definitely has the potential to mean a lot to many readers cuz I could see how the book was going to have central themes of healing, inner strength, and building trust, which are themes I’ve seen in writing from both authors, but this book just was not a good fit for me. I wish I’d liked it more because I was excited for demiro rep and I have really enjoyed other books by both authors, but Shadows You Left just filled my brain with too much grey and shadow for me to enjoy it....

I count Jude Sierra's previous books among my very favorites, though I have always had issues with the inconsistencies in her writing; I find that her prose tends to alternate between totally gorgeous and curiously disjointed. Despite this, the emotional honesty she brings to the table and the sensitive way she deals with tough topics have been enough to override my quibbles. This time, though, I found the writing to be particularly awkward, and there's just not enough substance to make up for it.