{Review} Arsen by Mia Asher

I have to start off by saying I was not going to review this book, I was just going to read it and see what everyone was talking about.. 

I was WARNED, I was FREAKING WARNED that this book would kill little pieces of me before the end and I didn't listen, I was like ehhh I am sure it won't be THAT bad but it was, it totally was... 

Here is my review for:

One glance was all it took…

I'm a cheater.
I'm a liar.
My whole life is a mess.

I love a man.
No, I love two men…
I think.

One makes love to me. The other sets me on fire.
One is my rock. The other is my kryptonite.

I'm broken, lost, and disgusted with myself.

But I can't stop. This is my story.
My broken love story.

MY THOUGHTS

I am still in a book fog because of this book and I do not know which way I want to go with this review.. 

I loved this book, I HATED this book and I have no IDEA what to rate it..

Do I rate it 5 because the writing was THAT good?? DO I rate it less because the subject matter was unsettling and I HATED the main character??? 

I. HAVE. NO. IDEA

So I am going to tell you everything that I thought about this book instead..

Cathy, is a woman who is very lost, depressed because she can't do something that most woman can and it eats her alive.

 Instead of talking about it, she keeps it buried deep within her soul. This thing becomes an entity of itself, blackens her soul and takes on a life of its own. 

She starts to feel black, she gives up, she doesn't want to face it anymore and she's just broken. Her spirit crushed by each aching pain inflicted and she's buried deep within the blackness..

Her husband, her beautiful angel of a husband, Ben is trying so hard to keep her above the surface of the blackness that has consumed her soul but he is losing this battle and she is slipping further and further away from him. With each missed call, text, lonely night spent alone because she was "busy"... pieces of him start to die too.

They are broken..

“I am sorry. I am so fucking sorry for not being able to give you... but you are enough. You are more than enough for me. You’re my fucking world, babe. And I need you back. Please stop shutting me out, I can’t take it anymore........

 Own me, fill me, break me, repair me, complete me. Do whatever you want to me. Just stay with me. I need you. I need to be able to live. I need my life back, I need you back.”

Arsen.. oh sweet, beautifully broken Arsen has his own demons to fight and he thinks helping to fix Cathy's will help to heal him too or that they can heal each other.. He takes what isn't his to take, offers things he should not offer and then when he gets what he wants he does what he always does and screws it up. 

Cathy cheats over and over again with Arsen and she doesn't feel guilty, she cannot be made to feel guilty because she is finally feeling something other than blackness. She is being carried to the surface a little bit at a time, every time she is with him.

 It's like she can breathe, live, and love for the first time, all over again. 

But what she feels cannot last, the relationship was built on a foundation of lies, lust, and cheating. That is not a solid foundation that a relationship can blossom from, it is rocky at best, they cannot trust one another. Arsen gets jealous and angry, while Cathy just has to take it because....well... he's right...

So here it is.. 

The subject matter was hard to swallow, it did not go down easy and there were parts where I just couldn't read... I just couldn't!! 

Cathy was being a big cunt, I understood her, I felt for her and her pain I understood it but I just couldn't get over the pain she was inflicting on to Ben... She broke MY heart and all I wanted to do was reach through the book, grab Ben and stuff him in my pocket to protect him from what was coming...He was what every woman wishes her husband will be and what every man should strive to be like...I LOVED HIM!!

"Late Sunday morning. I watch as my husband’s large and powerful body falls to the ground in surrender. Broken… by me."

Even though I HATED the subject matter itself, I actually loved the whole concept of this book.. 

Now you might be thinking, 

"What??? this bitch has lost her mind, no way could this book be anything but horrible when it comes to the subject matter!!.." 

But hear me out first..

I will never ever ever condone cheating... it is WRONG and NOBODY wins when someone cheats but this book was kind of like a cautionary tale of what can happen when you do cheat. What happens to the people when temptation and lust overshadow true love. What broken people can become even if they think they are getting everything they want.. 

She took a subject matter that most people consider awful and used it to teach a lesson to readers about the what ifs.

(Of course I don't know for sure if she was trying to do that but thats what I took away from it)

I thought long and hard after reading this book, about my marriage, about my husband, about how easy love can fall apart and how HARD it is to keep it together.. 

Marriage is a lot of work but the best ones are worth fighting for..

"Falling in love with someone is easy. It’s loving when the newness has worn off, when life gets tough, when things get in the way, when physical passion is gone, that true love remains. When love can conquer it all.”

It had me thinking about all of this and making me appreciate everything I have, making me grateful for the love that my husband and I share. We may drive each other effing crazy but at the end of the day he is my everything and I couldn't love him more than the day I met him.. 

Plus, the author didn't hold anything back to make it easier for her readers to read. She let it progress, wrote everything; every thought, every feeling and also let the reader experience it for themselves. 

She did such an AMAZING job portraying the hurt, pain, anguish, betrayal, love, lust, and heartbreak of these characters.. 

She reached inside my heart and soul and stole little pieces of it and I came out on the other side of the book in a pile of mixed emotions. 

I thought I have been emotionally unstable before because of a book but she gave me a whole new meaning of emotionally unstable!! 

I was seriously damaged after this book but I definitely enjoyed each soul-crushing minute of it!! 

And LEZ-BE-HONEST the sex was freaking HOT,even if most of it I was cringing because in my mind I knew it was fifty shades of fucked up ;)

The only thing that made me disappointed was the way it ended, I wanted a little more and a different type of epilogue because I think as a reader I needed to see what happened after the rainy day on the street..What exactly happened? How did it progress? There was just so much happening I wanted to see the steps that it took. 

(I am being vague because I don't want to give anything away)

Also, it took me a while to get into it but once I did, you could not pull this book from my hands.. I was a raging bitch to anyone who tried to interrupt my reading time.. 

I NEEDED to finish it, it was a matter of life or death people!!!! 

AMAZING JOB MIA ASHER can't wait to read more from you in the future because YOU my dear are FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC!!!!!

If you want to join in on the crazy here are the links to her book:

NOOK USERS