Review: Resistance (Chicago Defiance MC #1) by K.E. Osborn

Title: Resistance

Series: Chicago Defiance MC #1
Author: K.E. Osborn
Publisher: K.E. Osborn
Published: May 20, 2018
Pages: 274
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Adult, Crime Fiction, Motorcycle Club
Source: Kindle Unlimited
~~~~~

Isn't it funny?
The way your life can alter in the blink of an eye. 

My club – constantly under siege by the Italian mafia.
My city – in a war lasting two generations caused by our fathers.

Yet, in amongst the turmoil, I met her.
In a froyo store.
This sassy woman who’s ready to throw down and defend her friends against my brothers and me. 
But we aren't the enemies in this story, and little did she know our chance encounter would set us along a different path. 

This story isn't full of partying and fun – it's chaos, carnage, deception, and lies.

War – it's brutal.

Can you resist?

Goodreads / Amazon

MY REVIEW

DISCLAIMER: This review MAY contain spoilers. 

I really didn't like this book. It had some redeeming qualities, but there were too many things that irked me to actually like it. If I'm being honest, I almost stopped reading around the 30% mark simply because I was bored and had no desire to continue reading. It's a bloody miracle that I did decide to go on. I am not the type of person to DNF a book, otherwise this one would have definitely been abandoned. 

I am just going to start off with what I disliked the most, which was the romance. This book is the strictest definition of instalove and I hated it. It was totally unbelievable and a lot of the romantic banter was cringe-worthy. Some of it was so bad that I almost felt uncomfortable. Once the instalove card has been played it is unlikely that the romance can be saved for me. Even if the characters display real emotions and can stand on their own otherwise. The one good thing that the romance had going for it was the chemistry between the characters. Otherwise, the romance was too unrealistic to have any merit. 

Another thing that bothered me was the portrayal of the motorcycle club/biker culture. I don't know if the author has any real-life experience in this area, but it did not seem like it to me. Since the day I was born, I grew up in the biker culture. My parents were bikers when I was a child and they are still part of a motorcycle club to this day. The world-building associated with biker culture was too unrealistic for my liking. It may just be that my real life experience differs from others, but it was still hard to get a grasp on the story when all of the world-building is surrounded by this culture and it feels like it was written by someone that has no idea what they are talking about. 

I felt like the plot had some promise. It definitely isn't a mind-blowing story that will blur the lines of reality with its epicness, but in terms of a guilty pleasure romance read it works. 

I liked the background and side characters in this book much more than the two main characters. When it comes to the two main characters, I have to admit that they do have nice chemistry and it was mildly entertaining to a point. But for the most part, I found them both rather annoying. They did both have some nice qualities about them that made their characters stronger, but I could not get over how maddening they could be most of the time. I felt Torque was the stronger of the two main characters. His backstory was strong and full of emotion. Heeley was largely vexing and some of her dialogues had me cringing. I think that the members of the motorcycle club and the froyo shop pals were more interesting most of the time. 

Overall, this just wasn't for me. My real world parallels were too vastly different from what was portrayed in the book for me to really get into the story. The romance was disappointing, and while some of the background characters were enjoyable, that wasn't enough to save this one for me. I also found numerous spelling errors that made me wonder how they could have possibly been missed in a round of editing. I can't say that I can recommend this book, but if motorcycle club romance is your thing then you will probably enjoy it.

This is my first time to read a motorcycle club romance. I didn't particularly care for this one, but I think that it was because of the writing and less the genre. Have you ever picked up a new genre book that you didn't care for that affected the way you think of the genre? At this point I am kind of turned off of motorcycle club romances. Which new releases are you excited for?