Book Review: Fighting Love by Abby Niles

Fighting Love by Abby Niles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received an ebook ARC from Netgalley in return for an honest review.

This is the second book in Abby Niles' Love to the Extreme series. You can find my review of the first book here. I have really enjoyed both books in the series and I'm looking forward to the next book due out in 2014.

One of the things I like about this story is that Julie is the one in the friend zone, or as Tommy sees it, the sister zone. Tommy and Julie have been best friends forever. Julie has been in love with Tommy since she was a child. She's been pretty okay with this but things are changing between the two friends. Their lives are so different, Tommy has been focused on his fighting and the lifestyle that surrounds the sports. Julie is fine with the quite life at home and doesn't much care for the lifestyle.

Julie's quite life is about to get a change when Tommy moves in with her. Things have been rough for him, he lose his belt, then he lost his job, and at the start of the novel he looses his house. Tommy's in a weird place right now in his life, he's not sure what he's supposed to do or where he's supposed to go, the only solid thing is his friendship with Julie. Things start to change when Julie starts seeing another fighter. Tommy becomes jealous. I'm talking green eyed monster jealous. It was nice to see things from this tough guy's point of view.

Abby Niles does a really good job of breaking down the male point of view and showing the reader that these tough guys do have soft sides. Tommy shows his soft side a number of times in this novel (sometimes a little too quickly). I really liked the relationship between Julie and Tommy, both as friends and lovers. When Tommy is given the chance to get back into fighting things get strained between the two of them on both fronts. This is when I feel Tommy's mood swings were a little extreme. Julie too was quick to jump to conclusions, but I almost understood her reactions more than Tommy's. Julie has been on the sidelines before, she knows how Tommy changes and doesn't want to go through that again.

I would have liked to have seen a bit more of the characters from the first novel. We get Dante and Caitlyn's wedding, but I would have liked a little bit more interaction with them. Abby has set up future novels and I can't wait to see how these will play out!

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