Playing Patience by Tabatha Vargo

Review by Kimmi

Holy Fuck! Why!!!! Why dear Lord baby Jesus!!!! WHY?!? Let me explain the travesty that occurred by allowing this elite superiority to rest for WEEKS on my kindle bookshelf, she was so dusty with electronic dust bunnies, I almost put her back on the shelf, but the cover pulled at me, and I, thank God,  opened her up. Teenage characters! There is my excuse. Yep, that's what held me back, Seriously! This is why I try to not read damn book descriptions, I'm not letting myself judge a book by its cover, instead I let my damn assumptions over ride my gut feelings! No more! I will judge every book, this day forward, by its cover and on my intuition, I solemnly do swear........

Holy hell reading this was like watching my heart be ripped out and screaming bloody murder! <- these were my thoughts by the end of chapter one!!! This story was sooo what I needed, you see I just finished Unbeautifully by Madeline Sheehan, and had myself in a horrid book hangover. However, it didn't last long, and for that I thank you Tabatha Vargo, you pulled me from the depths of despair and gave me even more to despair upon, and I loved every moment of it!

Zeke is a bad boy, a tatt'd up rocker from the wrong side of the tracks, when he isn't drinking enough liquor to numb the pain from his bruises and cracked bones, then he is getting stoned enough to make the ache in his chest left by his mother's death recede. Zeke is the guitar player for his band Blow Hole. And he always has a long line of ladies, err scantily clad loose ladies, that are anxiously waiting to see if he can play their bodies the way he plays his strings, play them well enough to make them scream. Zeke is so damn hot, oh my shitness! He is fuckin hot! He is beautiful, he is broken and he is a mothafuckin bad ass, and I effin LOVED him! Zeke not only piqued my inner smut whore's interest, but also a new inner personality woke up that I was unaware existed in my sick, twisted mind. HOLD THE PHONE PEOPLE, A NEW PERSONALITY IS ABOUT TO BE REVEALED! And she is an even bigger smut whore than, well my inner smut whore, she's Kimmi's inner smutty cougar! YES, Zeke pulled out my inner smutty cougar, and I found that crazy horny bitch dressed like a slut, right there in line with the rest of his groupies, wondering how to go about getting him him to start playing her strings! Shit! Sheesus Christ Cougar! Down girl! I'm trying to write a review here!  Sorry! She came flying out of no where! Lmao. Anywho, I LOVED the parts of the story where you get to read Zeke's POV, it made the story deeper, and added facets that allowed me under the surface and past just the way things seem, I really loved that Tabatha let's the reader get in side his head.

Zeke

Snowflake fell into his life like an angel, too bad there isn't any room in his world for angels,  his life is nothing more than a miserable hell. So, he brushes her off, it seems time and time again. She'll get burned messing with him, and so he returns her to her shiny expensive side of the tracks, time and time again. But this snowflake is built from tougher stuff, he just doesn't see her yet, he sees linen and khaki, not Patience, the shattered and split girl. The girl that has stood in the bowels of hell since her 7th birthday for two things alone, to keep her dying mother happy and in the dark, and keep her sister safe by keeping the attention off of her and on Patience. 

Patience is unlike any character I've read, she is soooo strong, yet so utterly broken. She will take on the weight of the world, she would gladly be the only standing solder and still charge full force towards the enemy for those she loves. However her strength wavers and buckles at the smallest threat made her way.

"You know what I am? I'm shattered, that's what I am. There are tiny pieces of Patience scattered all over."

"I'd like a piece of Patience." He reached across the table and ran a finger across my hand.

"I don't know if I can give you a piece."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know where they are." I felt my self frown at those words.

Snowflake aka Patience

Zeke tries his damnedest to keep this pure as the driven snow girl away and out of his world, but Patience is, well patient. She sees behind Zeke's armor of bad ass, drugs, sex, and rock n roll, she sees good, she is willing to wait him out, as long as it takes. However the more he comes around, and the closer they become, the more her own demons surface, and she realizes she can never be what he needs. Her fears are too strong, and her demons are things like beasts that cripple her, they leave her frozen in fear. This thing that grows between them, it can never grow, hell it can't even be. How can a broken, battered man and a fragile, shattered girl ever come together and be anything other than fractured and damaged? How can they ever be whole........

During this heart wrenching love story you follow the characters through their own personal hell, you are subjected to the terrible abuse that they've lived in for years, you stand at their side and cheer, you sit in the corner with them as they cry. You gain hope for them to lean on one another, to learn how to love and grow, to trust each other and to heal with each other. Each blow Patience or Zeke takes, you witness it and you feel it all the way to your soul. This is a pain filled and emotionally devastating story, and Tabatha Vargo easily hooks you on page one, by chapter two you are so emotionally involved and attached to her characters that you have no other choice but to ride this painful, sad story out until the the very, very end.

I give Playing Patience 5 -just rip my heart out and take a bite- Kimmi stars*****