Review: Fighting Solitude by Aly Martinez

Title: Fighting Solitude
By: Aly Martinez
Series: On the Ropes #3
My Copy: Ebook from Publisher
The BookWhisperer's Rating: 

I was born a fighter. Abandoned by my parents, I spent my life forging my own path—one guided by my fists and paved with pain.

Untouchable in the ring, I destroyed everyone who faced me, but that’s where my victories ended. Outside the ropes, I repeatedly failed the few people who loved me. Including my best friend, Liv James—the one person I’d die to protect.

Even though I didn’t deserve her, Liv never stopped believing in me. Never gave up. Never let go. After all, she understood what I’d lost, because she’d lost it too.

Liv was everything to me, but she was never truly mine.

That was going to change.

I lost my first love, but I refused to lose my soulmate.

Now, I’m on the ropes during the toughest battles of my life.

Fighting to be the man she deserves.

Fighting the solitude of our pasts.

Fighting for her.

This is my first book by Aly Martinez and sometimes it is a little nerve-wracking to start reading a book from an author you haven’t read anything from before.  You could love their style or you could end up hating it completely.  But I gave this book a shot (and the book cover helped as well) and found out that I am a big fan of Aly Martinez and the Page brothers! Although I do have a confession, I haven’t read the first to books in this series.  But after finishing Fighting Solitude, I bought them!

Quarry, being the protector, stumbled upon Liv getting bullied by two boys and did not stand for it - from that moment, instant best friends.  Every spare second was spent together; Liv rooting for and watching Quarry work towards his dream of being a boxer and Quarry protecting Liv from the silence and darkness that haunts her life.  They are two peas in a pod until an incident takes place and separates them.  During this time, both characters grow up and move on – leaving each other behind.

However, finding out that Quarry has gone “deaf” brings Liv back into his life and the life of Mia, Quarry’s girlfriend.  Now instead of two peas, there are three.  But happiness doesn’t last for long.  *Spoiler time* I think most know that Quarry and Mia do not last because Quarry and Liv have been written in the stars but I won’t give anything else away.  Mia’s departure from Liv and Quarry’s life rocks their foundation and brings them even closer together and this starts to kindle a quiet love between the two that both want but find it hard to fight for.  All the complications that they encountered made me root for them even harder because they both deserved happiness and being with each other gave them that happiness. 

I found the story of Quarry and Liv to be quite wonderful and beautifully written.  I felt both the tug and pull each character had on each other and thought the resistance that Martinez added made them feel real.  To suffer like they both had and then to just go with the flow is not how real people respond – Liv and Q wanted each other (every single day) but would pull back their feelings in order to continue to have the perfect friendship and respect for Mia.  It was almost as if their feelings for each other were forbidden until they themselves accepted what everyone else knew, that they have always been a couple. 

Like I said, I bought the first two books in the series because I loved Fighting Solitude so much and I plan to devour them as soon as possible because I know that they are nothing but brilliant.