738 Days by Stacey Kade (Website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads)Also by this author: Finding Felicity
Published by Macmillan on June 7th 2016
Genres: Contemporary, Fiction, New Adult, Romance
Pages: 432
Format: Paperback
At fifteen, Amanda Grace was abducted on her way home from school. 738 days later, she escaped. Her 20/20 interview is what everyone remembers—Amanda describing the room where she was kept, the torn poster of TV heartthrob Chase Henry on the wall. It reminded her of home and gave her the strength to keep fighting.
Now, years later, Amanda is struggling to live normally. Her friends have gone on to college, while she battles PTSD. She’s not getting any better, and she fears that if something doesn’t change soon she never will.
Six years ago, Chase Henry defied astronomical odds, won a coveted role on a new TV show, and was elevated to super-stardom. With it, came drugs, alcohol, arrests, and crazy spending sprees. Now he's sober and a Hollywood pariah, washed up at twenty-four.
To revamp his image, Chase’s publicist comes up with a plan: surprise Amanda Grace with the chance to meet her hero, followed by a visit to the set of Chase’s new movie. The meeting is a disaster, but out of mutual desperation, Amanda and Chase strike a deal. What starts as a simple arrangement, though, rapidly becomes more complicated when they realize they need each other in more ways than one. But when the past resurfaces in a new threat, will they stand together or fall apart?
Have you ever finished reading a book and wished you had read it sooner? I mean, I had this ARC, and I really wanted to read it, but it just didn’t make it to the top of my to read pile very fast which makes me sad, because once I finally picked it up and finished it, I wanted to start all over again at the first page.
Now I know that when you read the summary of this you’ll think it’s going to be a super heavy story… and don’t get me wrong, because it is, the basis of this story is heartbreaking, but it’s not overwhelmingly depressing if that makes sense. Amanda was abducted at the age of 15 and spent 738 days the captive of a horrible human being. She had one thing in the small room that kept her somewhat sane and reminding her that she had a home to go back to, and that was a poster of the teen heartthrob Chase Henry.
Amanda is now 20 and stuck… she’s not moving forward, she wants more from her life, but she can’t seem to get past her history, and her family is suffocating her. And then Chase Henry appears in her life.
Chase Henry went from a breakout star to a has been in just a few years… admittedly of his own doing. His family has disowned him, the people he thought were his friends ditched him after his legal troubles and he’s lucky if he can get his agent to call him back. A young director is willing to take a chance on him though, and he’s bound and determined to not screw it up. The only person still in his corner is his overeager publicist… and she’ll do whatever she has to in order to make it in the entertainment industry. Including setting up a surprise meeting between Amanda and Chase.
Despite their initial disaster of a meeting, Amanda decides this is the push she needs to move her life forward and it could be mutually beneficial to both her and Chase. So for the first time in years, she leaves the safety of her small town with someone she barely knows and heads to the set where Chase is filming, but what they don’t expect is the connection they find that exists between them, and also the unexpected trouble that suddenly makes its presence known.
Seriously, the backstories for these two characters are utterly heartbreaking, but I was immediately invested in both Amanda and Chase and both their lives before and after these horrible things happened. This is my first Stacey Kade book, but I’m definitely going to be getting her other books. Her writing just pulls you in and the characters will have you feeling every single hurt and triumph as you turn each page.
I have to tell you guys that I absolutely loved Amanda… I felt her pain and frustration in every single page! What happened to her is just one of the issues in her life now, her family … her parents and her two sisters, are just as stuck as she is. They don’t know how to make anything better and there is a lot of guilt floating around their house. I loved that Kade really didn’t shy away from the ugly things that happened to Amanda, that she made Amanda strong enough in some aspects to be able to face that part of it head on… she was blunt about what had happened but on some level I loved that she knew not acknowledging it wouldn’t help her in the long run.
Chase isn’t the perfect heartthrob everyone thought he was, and despite all the mistakes he may have made, I couldn’t help but be taken by his patience and kindness towards Amanda. I totally understood why he made some of the choices that he made in both his past and now.
And these two together… they will have you melting. I loved the moments of this book where Amanda and Chase are just getting to know each other and learn the stuff that isn’t in their biographies. The way they slowly open up to each other and share the things that others just don’t know. The way the trust slowly builds and the deeper intimate connection reveals itself – PERFECTION!
I will say that there is a bit of a mystery here, as something from one of their pasts resurfaces and while some of that was a bit predictable, I didn’t even care that it was because I was so engrossed in the story for that to cause any kind of issue for me.
738 Days is filled with sweet and sexy moments, a complicated and emotional journey for two characters who you won’t be able to let go even as you turn the last page.
If this isn’t on your to read list yet, you need to get it there immediately and read it asap!
Thank you to TOR books for the early copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.
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