Kirsty's Reviews > Wounded

This book was truly one of a kind! I had no idea what I was going to get when I started, I had read reviews where readers were saying they were physically sick.. I get it, and I completely understand why now that I have finished. However, I managed to refrain from running to the nearest toilet.. that doesn't mean it was easy though. It wasn't, it was very hard at times, it was so raw, so gritty.. so real.

Wounded is the story of two broken souls from polar opposites of life, coming together in the most tragic of circumstances to help each other, heal each other, and finally be free.

Rania has spent ten years, from the age of fourteen, being a prostitute. She is alone in the world and the only way she can survive, the only way she can afford to feed herself, is to lay down on her back and morph herself in to Sabah, the prostitute. This is the only life Rania has ever known.

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Hunter is an American soldier with just as horrific a past as Rania. He has grown up alone in the world, with only a best friend to call his family. His parents dead, his girl friend a liar and a cheat, he has nothing anymore.

Right smack bang in the middle of a war zone, these two meet. Hunter lying half way to death, and Rania feeling it her responsibility to save him. Days pass and Rania is nursing Hunter, but she is starting to feel things she has never felt before - attraction for a man, lust. When Hunter is finally awake and they spend their days teaching each other words of their own language, which I have to say were some of my favourite scenes, he starts to feel these things too but he knows there is no way it can possibly be.

"She needs Prince Charming to carry her away from this hell of dust and sin and war, and I am not him."

Wounded isn't just a book about doom and gloom and war, yes there is a lot of that, and quite honestly some of it was really just so shocking I had to stop and read. But in the midst of all that tragedy was one of the most heart-warming love stories I have ever had the joy of reading. The relationship between Hunter and Rania was so real, so honest, so totally beautiful.

Hunter touches my cheek, kisses my chin. "I will always love you. You saved me, Rania."
I shake my head. "No, you have saved me,"
"We have saved each other then," he says.

I honestly could not recommend this book enough to people. It isn't an easy read by any means but it is a truly beautiful one that will stay with me for a long time.