Heavy M.L. Burns

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊

Spice Rating: 🌶🌶🌶🌶

Blurb:

𝓒𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓪

Everyone has a past, but mine is a storm that never stops chasing me. When my life goes up in flames by my own doing, I’m left with an impossible choice: lose everything I’ve built or hide out in a remote cabin with a killer. My plan is to rebuild the vacation home where my family once spent summers, hoping it will distract me from the chaos.

But there’s one major complication: my roommate is way too hot. And who is this too-hot roommate? My damn step-uncle.

He’s a convicted murderer with a history as dark as my own, and maybe this cabin isn’t the only thing I’m desperate to repair.

𝓡𝓸𝓷𝓪𝓷

Fifteen years behind bars, and freedom tastes no sweeter than my old concrete cell. I figured I’d drink myself into an early grave or wind up back in prison. Then my little step-niece showed up, begging to stay at the place my brother let me live in.

She's fixing up the cabin, but I can see it in her eyes that I'm also on the plans for repairs. But I don’t need fixing; I’m not broken, just forgotten.

She’s a beautiful fighter with secrets she’s not ready to share. But she’s in a cage with a lion that’s been starved too long, and now that I’m free, I’ve got an appetite that will only be satiated by her.

My Review:

I need a moment before I even begin this review because Heavy by M.L. Burns is not just a book, it is an EXPERIENCE. A gutting, raw, emotional rollercoaster that had me cycling through anger, heartbreak, and everything in between. This book made me FEEL, and I mean that in the most overwhelming way possible.

Let me start with the flashbacks, because I was not prepared. There were moments in this story that had me in actual tears. The kind of crying where you have to put the book down and just sit with what you just read. The kind of emotion that settles in your bones and refuses to leave. As a mother, there is a specific kind of rage that this book ignited in me that I cannot fully put into words. The idea of a mother not believing her own child when they come to her with something so devastating, so heartbreaking, I wanted to scream. I wanted to reach through the pages. Because in every universe, in every timeline, in every version of reality, it would have been me and my children. ALWAYS. No husband, no relationship, nothing on this earth would have stopped me from going straight to the authorities and never looking back. The fact that that choice wasn't made had me FURIOUS in a way that only the best books can make you feel.

And the romance, oh, the romance. Watching it unfold so naturally amid all the chaos and heaviness of this story was like finding a small light in a very dark room. It was tender and real and exactly what this story needed to keep your heart from completely shattering.

Now I'll be honest, the FMC did feel quite young to me, and given everything she was carrying, everything she was surviving, I sometimes struggled to fully believe it. But here's the thing, something about her felt off to me from the very beginning, and I was right to pay attention to that feeling. There's a moment involving a fire and a roommate's dog, and all I will say is, that moment told me EVERYTHING I needed to know about who she really was underneath it all. And honestly? I understood every single decision that followed. If I were her friend and witnessed everything that unfolded, I wouldn't have been either. I hate that I get it, but I do.

This book juggles a LOT. There is so much happening within these pages that at times it feels like it might tip over under its own weight, but somehow M.L. Burns holds it all together and delivers something that hits harder than you ever see coming. Heavy is the perfect title because that is exactly what this book is, heavy in the best, most necessary way.

If you are looking for a book that will make you feel BIG, ugly, complicated emotions, pick this up. Just make sure you have tissues nearby. You have been warned. 💔🔥