Review: Surviving Raine by Shay Savage

RATING: 4 napkins

As the captain of a schooner catering to the elite on the Caribbean Seas, Sebastian Stark does his best to avoid any human encounters. Interacting with people isn’t his thing, and he prefers the company of a bottle of vodka, a shot glass, and maybe a whore. There’s no doubt he’s hiding from a checkered past, but he does well keeping everything to himself…

…until the night his schooner capsizes, and he’s stuck on a life raft with one of the passengers.

Raine’s young, she’s cute, and Bastian would probably be into her if he wasn’t suffering from alcohol withdrawal. As the days pass, DTs, starvation, and dehydration become the norm. Even the most closed person starts to open up when he thinks he’s going to die, but when she realizes their traumatic pasts are connected, it’s no longer the elements that have Bastian concerned.

He has no idea how he’s going to Survive Raine.

(via Goodreads)

(Originally posted on Goodreads, with errors... hehe... and modified a little for this blog)

I hesitated starting this book thinking I need to be in the right frame of mind based on the reviews I've read. After reading it, not sure why I waited.

This could have easily been '5 napkins' for me but certain things just brought it down a notch.

I liked Raine. She cried a lot but I think she's a pretty strong heroine, especially considering how young she is. She's only 20, and I'm totally aging myself but that is young in my book, hah! She handled the relationship well, I thought, and she was the anchor in that relationship. (pun intended... hehe)

For a change, the tiny beef I have is with the hero. In my mind, Bastian is not your typical hero. He's probably one of the most obnoxious, damaged, broken hero I've read of late. His insecurities, although it didn't annoy me and actually broke my heart at times, were at the forefront for the most part of the story and considering his age (he's 29), it almost felt like it stunted his emotional growth. At the same token, as weird as this may sound, what he did before he met Raine almost made sense because of his ugly upbringing. (Mind you, the whole thing almost felt like those 90's arcade games made into B-movies with gratuitous violence, but I digress...) And does that make it more forgivable? That and what he did for her while they were in the island (w/o giving anything away)? In my mind, I'm not sure, oddly enough. Hmmm... Oh, and yet, despite it all, I did feel the heartfelt effort on his part to make himself deserving of her (sigh)... 

It wasn't a long read yet I still felt it dragged a bit by the 80% mark. And I'm sorry but I probably could have done away w/o the epilogue. It was clearly a segue to a new story, and not really meant to reinforce the HEA. Actually, for me,  it was more like HFN ending, and I still would have been ok with just that.

Oh and I did learn some survival stuff. You just never know, right?:p

Over all, I did enjoy the writing, it was written from a male's POV (which I'm now finding I'm a fan of, in romance novels, as long as it's done properly), I appreciated how the relationship blossomed, and I liked the details about how their lives are entwined. I do look forward to reading more contemporary romance from the writer.


-Leftie