Withering Hope

Ok, well that just happened. I bought this audio while doped up on muscle relaxers and that\’s just a bad decision all around. Most of the time I read straight up romance but sometimes it\’s nice to wave a little action over the top of the romance so after an hour, I was hooked! Aimee and Tristan crash land in the Amazon with all the difficulties and angst you would expect. The book is fantastic. The reason why I am not jumping up and down begging everyone to listen is the epilogue. I know that I am not in the majority and I don\’t regret listening at all… But… Hmmm… The ending and I are not best friends. We like each other, we are glad to know each other… But I wouldn\’t want to have it over every night. If you know what I mean. Beautiful story, awesome writing, I applaud the author for either a) researching the crap out of the Amazon and diseases and plants or b) really good at bsing. The narration was on point. Couldn\’t have been better.

This has been on my TBR for a while so when the opportunity to listen to the audio version came up I was saying \’pick me please.\’ I didn\’t read the blurb or any reviews first so I went in with no expectations of the storyline. I am so glad that I did that because it made the experience that much more enjoyable for me. Aimee is en route to her fiance in Brazil to prepare for their wedding day, when the private plane she is in crashes into the Amazon rainforest. Fortunately she is not alone in her survival, the pilot Tristan has also survived and luckily for both of them he is ex-military so has a lot of survival skills hidden up his sleeve. As the days pass and the hope of being rescued dwindles, these two have to adapt to their new reality and gathering food, looking after their health and keeping themselves safe from predators becomes their new way of life. With nothing else to do they find themselves talking to each other about anything and everything. They get to know each other in a way that neither of them have done with anyone else in their lives. The situations they find themselves in are, at times, life threatening and this only strengthens the bond between them with feelings of more than friendship growing between them. With the knowledge that they may never get rescued clouding their minds they turn for comfort in each other and this only deepens the connection between them. It also makes Aimee question her feelings towards her fiance and she struggles with the guilt and what she is now feeling for Tristan. “Tristan slipped into my soul the way mist travels in the forest after the rain: unseen, unstoppable, and ubiquitous.” – Aimee I had no idea how this was going to play out, what would happen if they were rescued and she had to face her fiance? What if they were never rescued, could they survive a life in the rain forest and if so, how would any future children survive? It is easy to read something and make up your mind about how you would react or deal with a situation if you were in their shoes but that reality is that unless you were living it yourself, there is no telling what you would do. This was an exciting, thrilling and addictive read. I couldn\’t stop listening and finished it at 1.30am in the morning. A story that I will remember for a long time from now. “I used to hate waking up every morning. Now I look forward to every day, even though we\’re stuck in this place. Because it means one more day with you.” – Tristan

I loved this book. Fell in love with the characters. It was perfect – in every way. Their plight. Fight. Love. Ugh. I listened to the whole thing in one day! It was beyond perfect and beautiful.

I liked the premise of this, but not the execution. It was a bit slow and the situations were unrealistic and some scenes felt forced in order to fit the story, rather than flow naturally. The ending was interesting, and somewhat unexpected. The narrator enunciated the words instead of acting them or having the emotion the scenes needed. The narrator also paused a lot between sentences which stilted the flow of the story. This is a book that\’d probably better being read, than listened to.

So at first, I was intrigued with the story line. But after the plane crash, and the routine of day to day life in the rainforest, I was worried about being bored. Right when I started getting bored, something unexpected (well, it was probably expected since its the rainforest) would happen and shit started getting real. Every time one crisis was averted, another would happen soon thereafter. I would find myself sitting on the edge of my seat in anticipation of what would come next. Now I want to touch on the emotional factor of Withering Hope. We hear most of the story from Aimee\’s POV. We really get to know her, and she is a very likable character. We occasionally get short chapters from Tristan\’s POV about how much she loves Aimee and to what lengths he will go to protect her. It\’s pretty obvious from his first POV chapter that the love that the two of them are going to have is going to be epic. A lot of other reviewers have drawn connections between Aimee & Tristan\’s love to Noah & Ally from The Notebook. Never have I ever been about to compare another love to Noah and Ally. Until this book. Their love is full, complete, breathtaking and heartbreaking. You will tear up. You will be filled with hope, and then despair. Withering Hope is an extremely emotional book, and while that seems obvious to me at this moment after finishing the book, it honestly took me by surprise. I would love to see this book turned into a movie. I also look forward to reading more books by Layla Hagen. Her writing and storytelling was purely amazing. Lastly, I really enjoyed the narrators. They both captured the emotion perfectly taking the story to its full potential.

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