Heartbreak Warfare

I am 100% certain my sister was trying to kill me when she recommended this book to me. I was in NO way prepared for the emotional train wreck this was going to cause on my heart. This is brutal. This is not an easy read, and this will have you literally yelling at the book all the while it's completely ripping your heart out. 

I'm going to start this review out with the blurb that the book gives you, so you can get a little insight as to what your getting yourself into when you open this one. 

Briggs,

Remember when we parted ways in Germany? It was the day I broke your heart. What you didn't know was that I was breaking mine too.

I thought they’d be enough–my husband and my son. That I’d get home and everything would go back to the way it was . . .

Before the war. 
Before the ambush. 
Before you.

But, no matter how hard I try, I can’t erase the trauma we shared. I can’t seem to forget the way my heart beat in time with yours. 

The truth is I’m lost without you.

I thought the nightmare was over when they pulled us from that hole in the ground, but nothing could have prepared me for the war I’d face at home.
I know it’s selfish of me to ask, but, please, I have to see you one last time. . .

All my love, 
Scottie

This story is a story about a soldier named Katy. She is about to embark on her first tour overseas, and she is leaving her husband, Gavin and her son, Noah behind. She is lucky enough to be going over with her best friend. When Katy gets to her station she has trouble fitting in with everyone. A lot of the soldiers tell her she is an ice princess, no sense of humor, when in all actuality she is just struggling with being away from her family. The writing was SO good in reflecting the pain she was feeling by being away, and I really felt that pain with her. She makes a few good friends over there, including Briggs. They experience something traumatizing. Traumatizing is not even the best word for their situation, it is absolutely brutal what happens to them. They both leave completely different people then they were when they got there. I can tell you that Katy struggles, she struggles so much with what happened to her, how her life has forever changed, and how to start living again. 

"Jesus Christ, is it always this goddamn painful?" I say on a whisper. "What?" She straightens in her seat, her eyes alert. "What hurts?" I cover my chest. "This. What I feel. This. Fucking. Hurts."

I liked Katy. She was pretty amazing. She was a bad ass soldier, she loved fiercely, and she was a great mom. I wasn't even mad at her about the things that happened, because she went through SO much. I can't even imagine the pain she was in, the things she had to live with every day, and then the unimaginable choice she had to make. I just wanted to reach inside the book and give her a hug, there are no words to describe the things she went through.I can't imagine having to make the choices she made, and live with the consequences of those choices.

"People use up all their sympathy and understanding in the first few days and weeks, and then they move on. They expect you to do the same. Suddenly your sadness makes everyone else uncomfortable, so you hide it. You hide it deep inside and let it eat away at you." 

Briggs was one of my favorite parts of the story. He had this aura about him that drew people to him. He had an amazing sense of humor and he lived to make people laugh. He truly lived by the saying "Live each day like it's your last." When he fell in love with Katy, he fell hard, and he struggled with being a good man and doing the right thing. He pushed away when he thought it was the right thing to do, and I thought that made him a pretty amazing guy. He put himself through so much just to make sure she lived the life he thought she deserved to live. 

"I'm not watching you do it again. I can survive being a soldier, I can survive another war, but it seems I can't survive loving you. If I have to let you go, you have to let me go too." He leans in on a whisper. "I love you, Katy, let me go."

I also liked Gavin. He was a captain in the military, and Katy's husband. I think one of the hardest parts of this story was there was no bad guy. They all had good hearts, they all endured so much pain and agony, and it was just tearing me apart to read their pain page by page. Gavin was a great husband and father. He loved Katy unconditionally, and he understood when she came home that she would never be the Katy she was when she left. He gave her the space she needed, he was there when it looked like she was never going to be okay, and he stepped up to be a great parent to Noah. At the end of the book I loved him even more. The sacrifice he made was just unbelievable. 

"On our wedding day, we promised to give each other the life we deserved." His thumb whispers over my knuckles gently. "I'm giving you the life you deserve, Katy. Take it."

This love story is hard to describe. I think given the circumstances, and all that happend to these people the story ended the way it had to end. I was rooting for everyone to get the happily ever after they all deserved. Sometimes I couldn't figure out how it should all work out, I couldn't figure out what the right choice should be, I struggled with my own feelings on how it should all play out. In the end I don't see how it could have went any other way. My heart still physically hurts for these characters, as if I know them personally. I want to re-read the book again just to dive back into their lives, but then I know I could never put myself through that pain again. 

Overall, I'm giving this book 5 STARS. What a heartbreaking, painful, yet absolutely beautiful read. I completely devoured this book, and it swallowed me whole. It ripped my heart out of my chest and threw it on the ground. The grief was real, the pain was real, and this story was beautiful. 

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