Reviewed by True

TITLE: The Darkness Within: An MM Hurt Comfort Romance

SERIES: Scars And Stripes Trilogy #2

AUTHOR: Raquel Riley

PUBLISHER: Self-Published

LENGTH: 328 pages

RELEASE DATE: May 23, 2024

BLURB:

You can’t give your heart away until you first learn to love yourself.

Nash

A mission gone sideways. My world turned upside down on a dime.

Held prisoner in the dark tunnels below ground, cut off from the world, I was hanging onto life by a thread. Wanting to end my suffering, but afraid to let go.

And then I was rescued. Dragged into the light. My first breath of freedom in twenty-two days. But I was still trapped in my nightmare, inside my head.

A prisoner of war.

Brewer

His mind may be broken, but his soul is still intact, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. As his sponsor, I promised to help him find his way, to show him how to love himself again. I’m breaking all the rules of recovery by falling in love with him. But when you find the person you’re meant to spend the rest of your life with, you don’t want to waste another day apart.

The Darkness Within is the second book in the Scars and Stripes Trilogy. This hurt/ comfort MM romance deals with heavy topics such as addiction, mental health, PTSD, and a forbidden love that defies all the rules. A high-angst story that has a hard-earned HEA and cameos from Proof Of Life.

REVIEW:

The Foreword already made me cry!

If you wonder how to write a heavy-topic story and keep it manageable and enjoyable to read, take a look at this piece of work. Nicely cut in clear pieces, enough attention to details you wondered about, but not hanging on them. The timeline, build-up, and the whole story were absolutely brilliantly done!

Sergeant Nashville Sommers has been through so much trauma, his mission in Afghanistan went wrong, he was taken hostage, kept underground for weeks by the enemy, tortured, and came to a point of giving up. Thank goodness he was rescued.

What’s left of him as a POW is just a ghost. Hospitalized with medication. He feels just as lonely and solitude as when he was captured, with his mind in the darkness.

Bow to the people who won’t let him slip away. One of them is Brewer Marx, a therapist, seen and been through enough shit on his own, he takes Nash with him to his Serenity House and is determined to get him on his feet again.

“You are your own worst enemy. Nobody can hate you more than you hate yourself.”

Brewer is a recovering addict himself, Nash’s sponsor, he has all the feels for Nash, and it’s mutual.
But first Nash has to quit all the toxicity, admit he’s an addict, heal and get stronger.

“I’m trying,” “Try harder.”

Climbing up from a deep dark place is hard work. Brewer’s determination is soothing to Nash.
Nash needs Brewer as his next breath, he wants more and knows Brewer feels the same.
Even though Brewer can’t cross the line, the pull of attraction is strong. Watch them!

“Surrender”

And yes! We meet the Bitches with Stitches group again!

Wonderful to read a completely different story within the same world.
To say it’s an easy read would be a lie, but it’s really written in a manageable way, the author did a wonderful job. The emotions ran high (or better to say deep), so palpable, I shivered, I cried and laughed with them.
Not that I looked for it, but I didn’t experience anything that needed improvement.

Please read the trigger warnings, there are heavy topics.

RATING:

BUY LINKS:

Amazon