Concrete Rose By Candy Rayne - Book Review

I agree and disagree with this read because even though I believe that love conquers on.  I am questioning if young love is really that strong.  I felt like I walked through the twilight zone and was reading about the problems that puppy love has, but I was clearly mistaken.  It was more of a tale about going after your dreams and following your heart as best you can.  It had tales of friendships that were gained and broken.  And unique set a character who each in a way had to grow in order to not just get what they want but learn how to come to terms with who they are and how they love.  Lankenua is a teenage girl who is uprooted from her home in Africa by her parents and is flown all the way to the US of A, where she goes to school at Gramby High and runs her parents store part time.

Now I always knew that on the other side of the world they were strict, but this book gave me vivid detail through this young girl and her journey.  You find out she is betrothed to Mejooli and that is good thing and bad thing for her here in the states.  I find him a little overbearing because he tries to control Lankenua a lot but you know she is not having that

She meets the boy Donovan and find out she has a gift of doing hair very well I might add.  Through long conversations they start to grow feeling for one another and that is where it starts to get weird because she ends up having really strong feelings for this dude despite her betrothal.  She ends up having this secret not so secret relationship with Donovan, he slips up though and they end up breaking up and Ms. Nua goes back to Mejooli and you can tell she really doesn’t want to.  You start to see the  point of view thru the different characters and see how they feel about one another like Donovan and Mejooli

You meet Korinn who ends up turning into nua best friend.  You learn that she is pregnant and you find her friend supporting and trying to guide her in the right direction.  Jeroui is Nua’s sister and unlike her, he is not attached to anyone or betrothed to anyone but he has found love in Jelisa.  In him, I see him a little wiser about what he wants to do with his future and he wants to bring his love with him.  Korinn ends up giving birth to her child with fatal repercussions.  Jonah ends up getting full custody of their son and you start to see his life start to come full circle after the whole funeral debacle

Things start to get even weirder and worse and London still does not learn his lesson as he sleeps with her mother just gross.  Donovan and Kenya break up just way to peaceful for me. 
They end up breaking up after Kenya is attacked by unknown assailants and at the time we don’t know who or why.

From here, the book is hard to put down after that.  Blood is thicker than water, in most cases except this one.  I was in shock for that one and after that, this book was good.  In my opinion, this book just got better and better.  The one thing that really threw me was the he said, she said throughout the story.   I felt like I was reading  a story based on who said what.  But if you can get past that then you will see a really unique love story. 

Book Details

Book Listing

Title: Concrete Rose

Author: Candy Rayne

Publisher: Pink Kiss Publishing Company

Published Date: June 01, 2013

ISBN-10:0985190957

ISBN-13: 978-0985190958

ASIN: B00KFXB2ZE