Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: Beneath the Stain Part 3
AUTHOR: Amy Lane
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 125 pages
BLURB:
Mackey Sanders doesn’t do anything easy—rehab is no exception. Never one to follow orders for the sake of being orderly, Mackey needs a reason, something real, to make him agree to Trav’s terms of getting clean. Trav knows he can’t be Mackey’s only reason to rehabilitate, but before he can convince Mackey of that, he needs to get to the heart of what’s been eating Mackey alive from the moment the band left Tyson. Can Mackey’s family—can Mackey’s band—survive the fallout of Mackey telling the truth? More importantly, can Mackey?
REVIEW:
The continuing saga of Mackey…. Geez. This one has a rough start to it!
When we left off at the end of part two, Mackey and Trav were trying to build some trust and work through Mackey’s drama. Unfortunately Mackey wasn’t ready yet, and wasn’t seeing the need for help. He thought he could just stop taking drugs and stop drinking and not have to deal with the underlaying cause. This is not the case. It truly does take hitting rock bottom for him to see it. Both for himself and for Trav, who finally loses his shit with Mackey. It becomes very clear that Mackey needs help, not only for himself, but for the good of the band and any potential relationship he’ll have with Trav. Off to rehab, and Dr. Cunningham he goes, for the third time I think! This time Blake goes with him.
So this part is about trust and healing. We assume anyway, who knows what will come next for these boys. Mackey has to learn to trust himself, Trav, and his brothers. Oh, and Blake too. They have some issues to work out between them, when they do, it made me a bit weepy. Mackey can be such a little shit, when he finally breaks it is awesome. He’s got to go there to heal and he does. He works so hard, both at the clinic and with the others, it’s just amazing. I wanted to hug him, feed him, wipe his tears. Pretty much what Trav wants to do too, but maybe he wants a bit more?
Not sure what I can say about Amy’s writing that I haven’t already said. This one will rip your heart out, as she does, but it’s so necessary. She’s got the emotional part of it, obviously, but the technical side of healing and rehab feels so real. I can see someone like Mackey actually going through the emotional mess of healing. I don’t know how Amy does it, there is such realism in her books.
I’m having mixed feelings about the serial release plan of this story, I think I’m feeling less emotional about the story with it in parts than I would if I was reading it all the way through. I read a part, but then I get distanced by reading five other books in the week in between before I get the next part. It’s not that I’m not connecting with the characters or the story, I totally am, but it’s not as overwhelming somehow. I am certainly anxious for the next part, but I’m not as weepy as I think I could be. But damn… This is an incredible story. Love the characters, the story, the writing, all of it!
Here are my reviews of the first two parts:
RATING: 
BUY LINK:
I looked at buying the serial, but my life is hectic. I will buy the ebook when released like that; I enjoy Amy’s books but also figured I would forget critical / emotional details between releases and then when I could read it. If I ended up reading back to back anyways, serial didn’t make sense for me.
Vicki, I was just thinking the same thing with this third part. This is my first time reading a serial, and I’m feeling disconnected in the same way you’ve described, but I do enjoy that we get those extras as each piece is released. I’d say I should wait until everything’s available, but I want to know what happens next, so don’t know if I’ll be able to hold out.
I was wondering, what are the extras? When I saw that in the preorder info I was puzzled as it didn’t define what the extras would be.
You get side tales, bonus scenes about characters. For example, we got a story involving something that happened with two characters off scene, something you wouldn’t know about if you just get the book. Or like one of the main characters that comes on the scene a bit later has his own story about when he was in the military. If you get just the book you’ll see a reference to it, maybe a sentence that sounds vague, but people who got the serial will understand the real story behind the line. Or like the scene in the military, the character says a few lines in the main story that mention “the time we…” but with the serial, we actually got a whole scene. They’ve been about 4-7 pages and are definitely interesting material. That’s what decided it for me, buying it in pieces, because I thought it’d be great to have those extra bits.
Thanks Carolyn! It was vague and I was already beyond my book budget so I skipped! Ha. You never know.
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