Undeniable by Madeline Sheehan

I went to Boston for the Boston Author Event, and while waiting in the frigid cold, I was told by 3 separate people to read Undeniable. I was only told it was about bikers, and all 3 said it with a smirk. To really grasp how naive I was, I didn't find out until I got home that the author was in Boston for this event.

So my ignorance about the plot was a blessing in disguise. Had I known it was going to start the way it did, I might have passed on it. The first couple of chapters really had me cringing at my eReader, but I soon realized that those questionable moments were necessary to make the rest of the story believable. If the story is a house, then those moments were a very solid foundation. If you live in Canada, it would be the kind of foundation that Mike Holmes would be very proud of.

I believe that the worst insult to a writer is for the reader to feel indifferent after they finish the book. It could mean indifference towards certain characters or the story as a whole. In either case, it's not good. If you love/hate something, it means that it was worth having an opinion about. To love something is great, but sometimes to hate something speaks greater volumes about the author's ability to suck the reader in to the story and keep them enthralled. So when I say I HATED Frankie, it's meant with extreme flattery.

Frankie was probably the kid that lit things on fire as a toddler, and started killing the neighbourhood cats by the time he was ten. As I kept reading, I was so disturbed by this nut job. Frankie would have been the ideal candidate for a nature/nurture debate. Though we don't get many details about his early childhood, it didn't come as a surprise when he finally lost his shit. As it was nearing that horrible part in the book, all I could think was 'if he's going to do what I think he's going to do, then Kevin Spacey's character from Seven has nothing on him'. I became so infuriated when I realized that smashing my ereader wouldn't get rid of him. 'Busting a cap in his ass would solve this' was my next thought.

Though Frankie is a major part of the story, it really is about Eva and Deuce. Both of whom I could have driven over countless times during numerous scenes (for some reason, this book made me want to inflict severe violence on almost every character). It seemed like just when the reader got the smallest glimmer of hope, one of these morons goes and destroys it. And just so they can drive the point home, they take a figurative bulldozer over all that crap, making it seems almost impossible for any sort of reconciliation.

This book got under my skin and I absolutely loved it. It's the best kind of itch that you can scratch (hey! I meant by reading it several times a week!). There are vomit-inducing scenes, but there are also moments of hilarity. Those were the ones I used to get my heartbeat back to normal. So you can really understand that this is now one of my favourite stories, I picked Montana to go into the Final Four in the NCAA. They lost in the first round, but just selecting them in my bracket had me diving for my eReader.

I can't wait for Canada Post to deliver the paperback - because it's one of those books that I NEED in more than one format.

I guess if you haven't read it, this is making you scratch your head. If you are considering reading it, be warned: it's not sunshine and rainbows. It's exceptionally raw, and at moments extremely disturbing, but it has such an underlying intensity that you just can't put it down. The story gets away with things that only a book based on these exact characters can.