This is a contemporary reconnection story about childhood friends Katy Lou and Elijah. They were the best of friends with super messed up families--Katy Lou's mother was an alcoholic and dad was gone, while Elijah's father was abusive. One night he and his mother disappeared, seemingly without a trace. Nearly ten years later, Katy Lou sees Elijah fighting in what seems to be an underground cage fighting ring--and she has to see him again. She is seriously involved with another man, Jacob--her date at the cage fight--but when she and Elijah reconnect, she knows her relationship with Jacob is well and truly done. 
 We get some connection between Elijah and Katy Lou, until his miserable father returns needing cash, and threatening Katy Lou. Expect melodrama, and some sexytimes and far more buried behind the spoiler tag. I wish I could say I enjoyed this. 
 Well, this book has topped my "Needs an American editor list" for 2015. The whole thing is frustratingly written in Queen's English, which wouldn't bother me at all, if it were set in Melbourne, or London, but it's set in California. With so-called Americans. Bollocks! It is stilted and awkward and overly verbose it the phrasing. Bonus, we touch all the melodrama bases: physical altercation with the ex, blackmailing parent, unintended pregnancy (while on oral contraception), break-up-to-protect-from-harm---without confessing that harm is likely or even possible, irrational jealousy over the ex, and the (inevitable) big showdown at the Okay Corral. 
 I get that Katy Lou and Elijah are childhood soul mates, but I don't dig the infidelity. Sorry. Be an adult. Call a guy and tell him it's over before you go into another relationship. 
 There are really so many issues with this story that pass highly suspect into completely unbelievable territory. The pace is slow and the plot is predictable in its twists even if the substance bends the limits of reality. I'm sorry, no woman is free on her own recognizance a week after shooting a man point blank. Even if he is an abuser. Not that I condone abuse, or think that women who defend themselves from an abuser deserve to go to jail, but the scene was not really even self-defense, sorry. (Not sorry! I am a pacifist and this was all really contrived; that gal would have been locked in 99% of the US.)