seriously romantic: worth fighting for by kirsty moseley

worth fighting for continues the story of ellie and jamie from fighting to be free. it's been three years since the events that closed out the first novel, and ellie has spent all of them hiding in europe. jamie is now out of prison and even more enmeshed in his thug life style. because he has nothing without ellie. there's no need to plan for a future when you destroyed it so utterly before it could even get started.

but when ellie's parents are in a serious car accident and she is forced to return to the states, it is inevitable that the two of them will end up in each other's orbits. moseley manages to draw this out, surprisingly. we spend a lot of time catching up with the two characters individually before we see them together again.

but ellie and jamie are too explosive to keep away from each other. when they do get back together, conveniently after ellie has broken up with her british fiancé, the sparks fly and they cannot keep their hands off each other. but the joy that the first book had is missing. they are older and more aware of how fragile love is. they are scarred. and that makes sense given everything. i still had issues with the characters' ages, i still think the author should have aged them up in the first book so that they were older here. these characters felt like 25 year olds, but they were only 21. but when i didn't sit and think about it, you know, it is one of those details that doesn't really matter. most of the time it was easy to forget how young they were supposed to be, so you could just roll with the story.

i also still struggled with how easy it was for jamie to be part of the criminal underworld, essentially running his own gang, and then turn around and give it up when it came to that. maybe i'm just scarred by years of watching general hospital and seeing how impossible it was for sonny and his associates to ever leave the business, but there is no way it is as simple as jamie makes it out to be. or as easy as the author makes it for jamie. even though there's that ridiculous showdown with jamie's rival gang, everything still happens too easily in my opinion.

but everyone gets their happy ending. so the minor quibbles are easily forgotten.

**worth fighting for will publish on december 6, 2016. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/forever (grand central publishing) in exchange for my honest review.