Review: The Truth About Him by M. O'Keefe (Everything I Left Unsaid #2)


Note: This ARC was provided by Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine in exchange for an honest review.

She was a creature of light, and that did not happen without darkness.

And she was mine.

I could not fight it any longer.


From the time they met, Dylan Daniels knew that the best thing for Annie McKay was to keep her at as far a distance as he could. She deserved more than what he could give her and everyone who knows him has warned her about his inability to love her. After the abandonment he faced from his parents and his brother, he never allowed anyone else to get close enough to peel back all they layers that hid all his truths...not until Annie answered the phone on that fateful day she entered the trailer. But as much as he wishes he was a good enough man to do the right thing, he can't deny how tethered they are too each other, leaving him with no other choice but to keep her by his side. His need to protect her is heightened even further when elements of his past he thought were long buried come back to wreak havoc once again.

With its predecessor having ended in a cliffhanger that left me clutching desperately at my tablet, author M. O'Keefe finally gives us, not just one, but several resolutions to the story of Annie McKay and Dylan Daniels with The Truth About Him. With a story that began with one simple phone call, Annie and Dylan are ensnared in a tangled web of truths and lies that often threatens to drive them apart, but only seems to bring them even closer to and more immersed in one another. Their love story is a complicated one, especially when their respective pasts rear their emotionally scar-inducing heads back. No matter how far Annie decided to run or how high Dylan climbed his mountain fortress, they were going to have to deal with everything they thought they left behind once they were confronted with the remnants of prior lives.

It's easy to see both Dylan and Annie as broken, what with Dylan's issues with his family and Annie's with her husband, but they haven't reached that point where neither one is no longer fixable. They've been able to survive whatever was thrown their way, dealing with all the baggage the best way they knew how--which was basically turning their backs and walking or running away. The thing is, if permanent resolutions to those issues aren't in place, they'll come back, sooner or later. And yes, maybe those resolutions weren't feasible before and enough time had to pass before they were able to finally come up with something that would ensure that they could truly move on to a brighter future without fear of constantly having to look back and see if all the ghosts of their pasts have caught up with them and will drag them back to darkness.

Annie and Dylan are forced to make choices in this sequel, choices that will either have them lead lives separately or to stick together and fight for their love. Annie's past is dealt with far quicker and easier than Dylan's, so it's fair to say that if the first book was more of Annie's story, this second one was mostly about twenty-nine-year-old Dylan. He's built a life that other people would envy, but he's still burdened by memories of the past and it's more difficult to pretend that it no longer affects you when you're faced with it in closer proximity. It's as if there's nowhere you can run to and doing something about his issues with both his father and his brother was not just about being able to have a relationship with Annie, but it was also about the ability of making peace with the past and seeing all sides of a story that he thought he knew.

While there were resolutions when it came to Dylan and Annie's story, I found myself with questions regarding certain supporting characters, namely, Max Daniels (Dylan's older brother and an MC president) and Joan (Annie's friend from the trailer park) and Blake Vargas (Dylan's friend and business partner) and Tiffany Vargas (Annie's friend and Blake's sister-in-law). There's definitely more to these four that deserves to delve into so I'm hoping that each couple (although they could always be paired with other people...but I did feel as if there was huge potential when they were interacting--in one form or another--here in book two) gets their own stories told in the future. Just saying. Future books aside, The Truth About Him was everything I hoped for in a sequel, and I count it as a 2015 top read. Five-plus stars. ♥

Read my reviews for the Everything I Left Unsaid series: 


Everything I Left Unsaid (book one) - five-plus stars - My Review

The Truth About Him (book two) - five-plus stars - My Review (posted above)

Release Date: 24 November 2015

Date Read: 24 November 2015

Learn more about M. O'Keefe.

Purchase The Truth About Him on Amazon | B&N | Kobo.

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