Review: Riot Street

Riot Street by Tyler King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Riot Street was my first Tyler King book – and damn, what a read. Without a doubt, I will be keeping an eye on this author. This was such a fantastic read. It was so close to being a five star rating (in fact, a large part of me is screaming to hand out my first five star rating in many months). Honestly, it delivered so much. As soon as I started reading this one I found it was impossible to put down. I was well and truly addicted from start to end.

The first thing that grabbed me was the writing. Tyler King has a way with words – there is no way to deny that. In fact, there were so many brilliant lines that I was sending them to a friend with my own personal commentary attached. The writing is deep and emotional, yet there is an underlying humour to be found in places. Elegantly written, the writing manages to mix cynicism and true heart. It’s a talent – that’s the only way I can think to describe it. Not to mention the way it allowed us to easily enter the mind set of our main character. Within moments I felt like I was one with our leading lady, and as the story progressed her emotions became mine.

Honestly, the writing was a thing of beauty.

The story was just as amazing. It is a deeply emotional story, offering so much more than I’d anticipated. The synopsis had me believing there would be something big, but I wasn’t quite expecting all of the beauty I received throughout the story. Things developed beyond what I was expecting, more emotional impacts were thrown in than I anticipated. Every time I thought we’d reached the pinnacle point in the emotional manipulation, something more pulled my emotions all over the place. Honestly, the number of different subject matters touched within this one is amazing. I could list them all to prepare you for what is to come, to demonstrate how wonderfully complex the emotional side of this story is, but to do so would be to give you spoilers regarding what happened throughout. Just know this story is an onion – each time you unwrap a layer, a new layer appears.

Equally amazing are the characters. The characters are as complex as the story, being onions themselves. It’s a very character heavy story, with most of the drama and twists being in relation to character development. I positively loved this about the story. Each new thing that was unveiled about our characters helped me fall even more in love with them. Even when I was annoyed at characters, I found myself loving the development that was occurring. Because the development – it’s another thing that left me with a serious wow feeling. It’s done in subtle ways, but the changes that occur are drastic. Whilst I loved most of the cast from the very start, by the end of the story I was completely enamoured with every character that had popped up throughout the story. Everyone played a part; everyone worked their way into my heart. No character was left undeveloped, everyone was real, and I could easily imagine bumping into any of these people on the street.

Pretty much everything about this story pulled me in. The characters were amazing. The romance left me experiencing a wide range of emotions. The events of the story messed with my mind in the best way possible. It really was an extremely powerful read, easily one of my favourites of this year.

The only thing that stopped me from giving that full five star rating was that some of the events seemed a bit on the predictable side. Although there were many unexpected twists, although a lot was thrown into the book that left you riding a crazy rollercoaster, there were certain things that I saw coming well before they appeared. As I’m extremely hard to pull a five star rating from, little things like this can stop me from handing out said five stars. Therefore, whilst I may not have given this a full five star rating, it’s a very strong four-point-five star read that I believe will easily pull five star ratings from many other people.

Overall, this book was a truly beautiful read and I cannot wait to see what else the author brings to the table.

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