Review: The Boy and His Ribbon by Pepper Winters

Title: The Boy and His Ribbon
Author: Pepper Winters
Series: The Ribbon Duet #1
Publication: April 3rd 2018
Genre: Coming of Age Romance
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Google Play | iBooks | Kobo
Rating: 3/5

“What do you do when you meet your soul mate? No wait…that’s too easy. What do you do when you meet your soul mate and have to spend a lifetime loving him in secret?
I’ll tell you what you do.
You lie.”

REN

Ren was eight when he learned that love doesn’t exist—that the one person who was supposed to adore him only cared how much he was worth.
His mother sold him and for two years, he lived in terror.
But then…he ran.
He thought he’d run on his own. Turned out, he took something of theirs by accident and it became the one thing he never wanted and the only thing he ever needed.

DELLA

I was young when I fell in love with him, when he switched from my world to my everything.
My parents bought him for cheap labour, just like they had with many other kids, and he had the scars to prove it.
At the start, he hated me, and I could understand why.
For years he was my worst enemy, fiercest protector, and dearest friend. But by the end…he loved me.
The only problem was, he loved me in an entirely different way to the way I loved him.
And slowly, my secret drove us apart.

The Boy and His Ribbon was something new and different than what I'm used to from Pepper Winters. She's mostly known for her dark romances but this book was a coming of age romance. 3 stars may seem a lower rating than I usually give books written by this author but I want to say that I definitely wasn't disappointed in it. It was a good read but it didn't go beyond 3 stars for me. Coming of age romances have never been my type of genre. I just like her dark romance books more. This doesn't take away any of the possitive things about The Boy and His Ribbon, though. It was quite a beautiful book.

Like I said this is something different and the beginning certainly isn't the most conventional of book beginnings. It all starts with ten-year-old Ren who's running away from the farm that he was sold to by his mother two years ago. What he doesn't know is that he's got a secret stowaway in his backpack; one-year-old Della. This might seem a little bit silly and I thought so at first too but somehow it does work for this story. 

It really was a coming of age story because we seem Ren and Della growing up together through the next seventeen years. There weren't chapters of every single year but it was close enough. I wasn't the biggest fan of the childhood years because I never really liked to read about characters when they were children in any book. That's just a personal preference, I'm guessing but that's just how it is. I did like how well Ren took care of Della when she was so little and how he did everything in his power to keep her safe. It got more interesting once Della entered her teenages years, even though some of it was quite awkward for her and Ren.

Overall, The Boy and His Ribbon by Pepper Winters is a book that will definitely give its readers a rollercoaster of emotions. It was beautifully written, melancholy, touching but at times it exasperated me a bit because of the characters' choices and actions. I can't deny that it broke my heart a little, especially in those last few chapters. This also caused me to desperately want the second book, which is the conclusion to Della and Ren's story. I'm eagerly anticipating it because the way it ended left me wanting for more.

Author bio:
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 20 books currently published, she has hit the bestseller charts twenty-nine 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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