The One You Fight For // I Was Crying By The End… It Was Amazing

The One You Fight For ( The Ones Who Got Away #3) – Roni Loren
Published: 1st January 2019

Source: Bought

Genre: Romance, Contemporary

My Rating:

How hard would you fight for the one you love?

Taryn Landry was there that awful night fourteen years ago when Long Acre changed from the name of a town to the title of a national tragedy. Everyone knows she lost her younger sister. No one knows it was her fault. Since then, psychology professor Taryn has dedicated her life's work to preventing something like that from ever happening again. Falling in love was never part of the plan...

Shaw Miller has spent more than a decade dealing with the fallout of his brother's horrific actions. After losing everything—his chance at Olympic gold, his family, almost his sanity—he's changed his name, his look, and he's finally starting a new life. As long as he keeps a low profile and his identity secret, everything will be okay, right?

When the world and everyone you know defines you by one catastrophic tragedy...
How do you find your happy ending?

This series has seriously been so good so far. I mean, I was wary going into the first book because any book which deals with characters who have gone through a school shooting and come out the other side is going to be emotional and I was worried it would be far too much about the characters trauma rather than learning to move forward but not forget what they have been through and what they have lost. The first book was awesome but a little dramatic now I think back on it but I totally couldn’t put it down. Then I wasn’t sure I wanted to read the second because Rebecca was not a favourite of mine so was I even going to like her story? I did, it was awesome and I need me a man in my life to cook for me like Wes. So when it came to the third release I’d finally learnt to put all doubts aside because I knew it would be good.

I wasn’t wrong.

As the summary says, this book is Taryn’s book and how she ends up falling for Shaw Miller. I adored Taryn, she was so hard working and she was the only one of the four friends who was already on the path she said she was going to set herself on in those time capsule letters. She knew where she wanted to be, she worked hard to study why the school shooting happened, and why others happened as well. To understand the psychology of the shooters and find ways to try and implement a programme in schools which would hopefully help prevent these kids ever getting to the stage where shooting their peers seemed like a good solution. She was so very intelligent and so dedicated and so very utterly stressed out from it all.

Shaw Miller was the brother of one of the school shooters at  Long Acre. He was older and had been a hopeful for Olympics. he had been dedicated to his gymnastics and had no idea of what his brother was to do. But afterwards, his life was changed forever. He was painted with the same brush as his brother and fell off the grid as much as he could. He never intended to move back around near Long Acre, couldn’t face everything that happened, but for his best friend Rivers he was willing to change his name and help him open a gym.

The pair of them were wonderful. I admired how dedicated Taryn was and I wanted the poor woman to give herself a break and I wanted to punch everyone who got in her way of doing such good things. It was frustrating to see Taryn struggling to get people to believe in the work she’d done and brush it aside as too expensive and instead be willing to spend money on measures which have already proven to be ineffective as shootings still happen! I loved Taryn best when she was enjoying herself and not stressing herself out from her work. When she sang that first karaoke song I liked her, even if she had a bit of an emotional breakdown afterwards. And when she cursing folks out on an obstacle course and treating a wall (called Wally) as if it were a nemesis and something she had to conquer. She was so much fun, and I loved her when she was with Shaw. Shaw brought out a fun side of her you never saw when she was working and stressing herself out with pressure from her family to live up to their expectations and the pressure she put on herself to make the world better.

And Shaw! That man broke my little heart and made me want to give him a hug and tell the world where to go and stop being so damn mean to him. He had been a successful gymnast with hopes of going to the Olympics before the Long Acre shooting. You saw flashes of this as he trained in the gym he opened with Rivers, when he was on the rings and when he did a floor routine to work out his stresses before starting his day. I have seen gymnasts on TV and let me tell you, those boys are hot and I would happily watch them practise all day so I was half in love with Shaw as soon as I met him. But as the book progressed and you learnt the sheer level of guilt he felt for his brother's actions and the amount of blame and hate he put on himself I wanted to protect him from the world. Taryn could not have been better for him (apart from when she got hella mean towards him at the end and I wanted to slap her for using his worries against him) but Taryn understood the psychology of his brother and the place he was at by the time the shooting happened. Knew that a comment made in the heat of a moment was not the root cause for such a tragedy. And she also knew that the public was wrong about Shaw, he had no anger problems and he was not like his brother in any way shape or form. He was a good man who unfortunately had a tragedy strike his family. I honestly hated how Shaw got lumped in with his brother when he was innocent. He was much a victim of Long Acre as anyone who was there because he was caught up in the aftermath too and had to recover from such a tragedy.

I loved how well handled the school shooting is within this series. You can tell Roni Loren has thought about how it has not only affected those who were there but also by those who felt the impact in other ways. She’s written the series so far so very well and she hasn’t gone wrong with this one. I understood the struggle between Taryn and Shaw, there were so many reasons not to be together but they brought out the best in one another and I wanted to shout at them every time doubts crept in and every time someone said something which made them question their relationship together. I was crying by the end of this book because damn it hit me in all the feels.

Have you read any of this series? Have you read the latest addition, what were your thoughts?