A review by shannonellis
Thrive by Shain Rose

3.25

I don’t even know where to start with this book. 😩
First of all, I’ll say that it was leaps and bounds better than the first two. Finally some likable characters. 🙂  

The reason I pushed though with this series is because I loved Jay so much as a side character that I just needed to see him get his happy ending and I’m glad I did. At first I was worried that he wouldn’t be done justice as a main character but I was pleasantly surprised. 

Mikka is the strong female character Aubrey and Vick should have been. I felt like the way she portrayed was pretty decent. She did a pretty good job of highlighting the shame and worthless feeling that so many victims experience and I appreciated that. She was incredibly frustrating but I’ll give her a pass because leaving abusive relationships behind is way harder than people realize.  

Now onto what I think was a failure in this book. 

First of all, it takes place in Jay’s home town but you barely got to see any of his family, which was incredibly disappointing. I may not have liked Brey as a main character in her own book, but I loved her dynamic with Jay and wanted to see more of it. It was a missed opportunity for some cute best-friend banter, which is sad. 

I don’t like how Jay kept referring to her as “mine”, which I’m normally fine with but it just felt kind of gross to me considering what she’d just gone through. 


I also felt like she kind of glossed over addiction a bit too much. Addiction is a vile, life-ruining thing and the way she approached it really fell flat for me. I think it wasn’t taken nearly seriously enough, which is a real shame. I just feel like if she was going to gloss over it then it could have been left out. 🤷🏻‍♀️