After reading Once Upon a Demon’s Heart, I was dying to read more of K.M. Moronova’s books. I stumbled upon Leave Me Behind, a dark military romance with a completely different vibe, but the same enemies-to-lovers intensity that I loved so much.
After a mission for the Dark Forces, a secret, unknown branch of the special forces, goes horribly wrong, Nell Gallows is the sole survivor on the Riøt Squad. Malum, the other squad on the mission, lost a member of their own, and what’s left of the team blames Riøt for the loss, especially Bones, the squad’s most notorious and feared member.
The night before Nell begins her new assignment, she decides that what she needs is one last night of freedom before she starts. The stranger she meets on her flight to California is perfect. He’s brooding, sexy, and doesn’t ask questions.
It was the perfect way to spend her last night, until she discovered that the man is the infamous Bones. Bones happens to be her new partner on the squad, where she is, at best, an unwelcome new addition.
Malum thinks they can terrorize Nell into quitting, and they won’t give up until she leaves, something she has no intention of doing. This is her only chance to avenge what happened to her squad. Nell only has a month to gain their respect and secure her place on Malum squad before she’s reassigned.
With a partner who hates her guts, and other squad members who aren’t much better, surviving Malum will be no easy task. But Nell Gallows has never been one to back down from a fight, and she’ll do anything to survive.
Surrounded by trauma and darkness, Bones and Nell are an emotional nightmare, and watching it unravel is undeniably entertaining. Their only redeeming quality is their loyalty to those they love. Beyond that, they are decidedly morally black. These characters are cold-blooded killers who know nothing but violence.
They expect to die young, and they live like it, too. All of the emotions and actions they experience are magnified. Both of them have lost people important to them and blame each other. They are lost in their grief, and it leaves them profoundly broken. As a result of this damage, wild and reckless decisions abound.
Leave Me Behind is easy to read. So many people use this as an insult, but it’s truly such an impressive thing for an author to pull off. Making a story that lives in your head accessible to other people is awesome, especially when it’s a story as dark and emotionally complex as this one.
The book is told largely from Nell’s perspective, with the occasional chapter giving the reader a glimpse into Bones’ perspective and the internal battle he has raging.
A warning to readers, this is a true bully romance, and it’s incredibly dark from beginning to end. The animosity here runs deep. The story is violent and bloody, and it’s infused with a deep pain.
You know what they say about the line between love and hate, and even though these characters can’t stand the sight of each other, they can’t keep their hands off each other either. It’s twisted and also so hot.
The spice is rough and hard, just like Nell and Bones. Their interactions are very on brand, with a violent and reckless kind of kink, and obsessive and all-consuming feelings.
A happy ending seems so far out of reach for Bunny and Bones, but despite all the heartbreak, they make it there somehow. It’s bittersweet, but that just gives it more meaning. Pain is what defines Nell and Bones, and despite the tears in my eyes at the end, I enjoyed Leave Me Behind immensely and can’t wait to read the upcoming books in the same universe.
Leave a Reply