Excerpt + Review: The Girl & Her Ren by Pepper Winters

The Girl & Her Ren by Pepper Winters
Published by Self Published on 6/5/18
Genres: Fiction, New Adult
Pages: 529
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"What do you do when you write down all your secrets? No...that's not enough. What do you do when you write down all your secrets and the one person who should never read them does?
I'll tell you what you do.
You hope."

REN
Ren didn't know the meaning of love until he took Della for his own.
To begin with, he hated her, but as the months bled into years, he learned the opposite of hate, dedicating his life to giving her everything.
Every sacrifice, every gift, he gave wholeheartedly.
But then love turned to lust and ruined everything.

DELLA
I was stupid to write down my secrets, but I'd been stupid before, so it was nothing new.
I couldn't blame him, hate him, fix him.
I tried to move on without him.
But no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to delete the secrets I'd written.
Until something happened.
Until he came back and read my stupid secrets.
And nothing was the same after that.

The Girl & Her Ren was HANDS DOWN my most highly anticipated read of 2018. The Boy & His Ribbon left my heart in a vice, had me salivating for the conclusion of this EPIC love story, had me thinking about this storyline no matter what else I was reading while I anxiously awaited this sequel. This duet is bigger, more monumental, more powerful than anything I can even describe. If you’re hoping for a cliche romance, this is not for you. If you’re expecting a fast paced, predictable read, this is not for you. But if you’re looking for a story that will carry you away, that will reshape your heart in ways no book EVER has, that will hurt and that will bring you joy and that will deliver such a refreshing, absorbing, thought provoking account of love and loss and longing, well, this duet is EVERYTHING you’re looking for and so much more you don’t even know exists yet.

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Jessica’s Review

5 “This was Everything” Stars!

“This story is no longer about a baby and a boy who were never meant to be family, but a woman and a man who were always destined to be soulmates.”

Ren and Della grew up in the wild, survived in seclusion, dependent upon only each other. The first book in this duet saw them come of age, followed them through infancy and childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, through the constantly evolving physical and emotional changes within their dynamic. They were sometimes parent and child. They were once siblings. They were care giver and dependent. They were friends. But as they grew older, the current that tethered them changed, the tenuous ribbon that bound them together became something else. It’s tortuous and exquisite and beautiful watching the escalation of this dynamic; it’s heartbreaking and consuming witnessing their struggle with reconciling all of it. Everything that happens on these pages hooked me, reached into my skin and my heart and clawed inside, gutting me, shattering me, devastating me, but leaving me both grateful and profoundly fulfilled by where this story ultimately went.

This sequel follows Ren and Della into adulthood as they navigate the revelations and fierce attraction between them. All the wrongness and all of the rightness about their relationship is picked apart and examined and agonized over in this book and it is PERFECTION. It’s what makes it so RIGHT. Ren’s inner struggle in this book — his reluctance, his insufferable battle between reconciling the past with the future, the torment he feels as he comes to terms with what was and what could be — it’s such a palpable war he fights. I just got him, I felt it all. His need to protect and fight and to do right by the one thing he loves most is what will keep you rooted in these pages until the very end. His inherent goodness warring with his insatiable need will keep you riveted. The worry over what people might think, the fear of what it would truly mean to relent, the juxtaposition between who Della was to him as a baby and what she’s come to mean as a woman, and the realization of what truly matters in the grand scheme of it, all culminate in this breathtakingly wild adventure of the heart and I was LOST in it.

This story is so much larger than anything I anticipated going into it. I expected romance but, as it turns out, romance is fleeting. But love? Love is timeless, endless, limitless. This isn’t a romance as much as it is an epic, timeless love story that far exceeded any expectation I had set for it. It’s an adventure. It’s a tale of survival. It’s a lifetime of moments and events and obstacles that all come together to illustrate the most wildly heart stopping, harrowing love story. In the first book, these characters grew up together in the wild, with nothing but a stolen tent and the trees and each other. This sequel finds these characters returning to the wild, retracing their steps as adults to rediscover each other in ways they never have, to unearth all the answers to the questions I didn’t even know I still had. It’s an intoxicating, awe inspiring, devastating tale of love that transcends time, circumstance and impropriety. If, in the end, you grasp the profound message on these pages, you’ll agree that it’s ‘brutal, heart-breaking, but somehow uplifting, knowing love never dies.’ It has left my heart aching, it’s left tears in my eyes, but I’m so overjoyed that I took this journey. The Ribbon duet is unequivocally one of the most unforgettable, remarkable storylines I’ve read in my life. It is extraordinary. It’s unforgettable and it’s undeniably Pepper Winter’s finest work to date.

Excerpt

The fallen papers crunched beneath my boot as I shifted my weight, leaning into her, seeking an answer. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She flinched, her eyes closing beneath an avalanche of pain.
This hurt.
Everything hurt.
“Della…please.” My calloused thumbs caressed her silky-soft skin, catching on her young perfection with my older imperfection.
Ten years separated us.
Ten years was an eternity when she was a babe and I was a boy, but now…it no longer held such power. I refused to let it because I didn’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t touch her the way I was touching her now.
She laughed quietly, full of torture and tragedy. “I did tell you. In a roundabout way.”
“You didn’t.”
“But I did.” She dared meet my eyes. “I never understood how I could touch you, hug you, kiss you, and you never knew. I didn’t know how I could hide my jealousy when you were with Cassie or later with your one-night stands. I lay awake at night analyzing every sentence I said to you, amazed that you never heard what I’d been shouting for longer than I could remember.”

About the Author

Pepper Winters is a multiple New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today International Bestseller.
After chasing her dreams to become a full-time writer, Pepper has earned recognition with awards for best Dark Romance, best BDSM Series, and best Hero. She’s an multiple #1 iBooks bestseller, along with #1 in Erotic Romance, Romantic Suspense, Contemporary, and Erotica Thriller. With 19 books currently published, she has hit the bestseller charts twenty-six times in three years.

Pepper is a Hybrid Author of both Traditional and Self-published work. Her Pure Corruption Series was released by Grand Central, Hachette.

Her books have garnered foreign interest and are currently being translated into numerous languages, including already released titles in Italian and Turkish. Audio Books for her entire back-list will be available in 2017.

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