The Edge of Never by J.A. Redmerski

From goodreads: Twenty-year-old Camryn Bennett had always been one to think out-of-the-box, who knew she wanted something more in life than following the same repetitive patterns and growing old with the same repetitive life story. And she thought that her life was going in the right direction until everything fell apart.

Determined not to dwell on the negative and push forward, Camryn is set to move in with her best friend and plans to start a new job. But after an unexpected night at the hottest club in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, she makes the ultimate decision to leave the only life she’s ever known, far behind.

With a purse, a cell phone and a small bag with a few necessities, Camryn, with absolutely no direction or purpose boards a Greyhound bus alone and sets out to find herself. What she finds is a guy named Andrew Parrish, someone not so very different from her and who harbors his own dark secrets. But Camryn swore never to let down her walls again. And she vowed never to fall in love.

But with Andrew, Camryn finds herself doing a lot of things she never thought she’d do. He shows her what it’s really like to live out-of-the-box and to give in to her deepest, darkest desires. On their sporadic road-trip he becomes the center of her exciting and daring new life, pulling love and lust and emotion out of her in ways she never imagined possible. But will Andrew’s dark secret push them inseparably together, or tear them completely apart?

Due to sexual content and language, this book is recommended for 17+ – Adult Contemporary Women’s – New Adult Fiction

I heard so much about this book. Bloggers and avid readers were praising its fabulousness. I had very high expectations when I began to read this story and the first four chapters I was struggling. I kept wondering when will the fabulousness smack me upside the head? There were moments during those chapters that felt a bit draggy and I wasn’t completely engaged. Then something amazing happened and yes, I got smacked upside the head!!!

Once I got past those few chapters, I was literally floored by everything!!  I was floored by every single moment on that damn bus!! I was floored by every moment that Andrew taught Camryn the beauty of living in the moment!! Most importantly I was floored by the way they fell in love with each other.

The Edge of Never is about a journey to self-discovery and staying true to who you are.  Camryn’s journey had me captivated with her one-way ticket to anywhere and her liberation became my own and it felt so freeing!!!

The friendship between Andrew and Camryn unravels into something much deeper and unexpected that I experienced a whirlwind of emotions.  As they get to know each other, there is a moment when Cam shares with Andrew why she feels she shouldn’t hurt and his response resonated so loudly with me that I had to take notes.

“Pain is pain, babe. Just because one person’s problem is less traumatic than another’s doesn’t mean they’re required to hurt less.”

Some of the things that Andrew said to Cam got me so excited and giddy that I found myself blushing! Their moments of intimacy left me breathless.  It was raw and beautiful and I found myself wishing I had a cigarette after I encountered those scenes!  But this story is much more than those scenes (as auh-mazing as they are) it’s about releasing the demons that paralyze us from truly moving forward in life.

The surprise twist comes out of left field and I found myself overwhelmed by the angst.  How did I not see that coming?  It’s the perfect element of surprise that will leave you with your heart in your throat and you’ll compare every romance novel you ever read to this one.  There is a scene during all the angst that I found myself crying.  Not crying like a complete lunatic but the kind of crying you can do with the right pair of sunglasses on.  It’s the kind of crying you feel to the very core of your being.

I was making my way to reading this book but had it not been for my friend Trish who gifted this to me, I would still be living under a rock!

“I have never lived the way I lived during my short time with you. For the first time in my life, I’ve felt whole, alive, free. You were the missing piece of my soul, the breath in my lungs, the blood in my veins. I think that if past lives are real then we have been lovers in every single one of them. I’ve known you for a short time, but I feel like I’ve known you forever”.

My final two cents: I love this book, I love what it did to me and I’m jealous of anyone that reads this book for the first time.