by Inger Iversen
Published by Inger Iversen on September 29th, 2014
Genres: adult, contemporary, romance
Pages: 342
Format: eBook
Goodreads
One of the few white kids in a rural Kentucky town, Logan Whyte always kept to his own kind out of self-preservation. He never considered himself racist, but that didn’t stop him from falling in with the wrong crowd that celebrated hate as much as he fought it - or from ending up in prison for eight years on an armed robbery charge.
A successful and educated black woman, Katie Andreassen is tired of being accused of betraying her own race. Her lonely isolation, coupled with her grief over losing her mother, inspire her to create a new pen pal program at Capshaw State Penitentiary, where her father is a warden.
The program brings together the unlikely pair, but Logan and Katie soon find themselves forced to overcome past fears and prejudices. Their friendship doesn’t come easily - threatened by a crooked lawyer with a grudge and a best friend who betrays her promise to help.
When faced with a world that forces them apart, Logan and Katie must show everyone else what they have discovered: that love is, in fact, colorblind.
Let me start off by saying this… I didn’t love Incarcerated but I didn’t hate it either. I’d say I thoroughly enjoyed it up until about 80%. I’ll just go down my list of points. I’ll start at the cover because it was undoubtedly the first thing that pulled me in. This ebook cover is up there but here’s the audiobook (I swapped back and forth). They’re both equally gorgeous. I stepped out of my comfort zone for this one. I would normally never read something that has a convict as one of the main characters. It’s just not something that appeals to me and brings up some bad memories. So I took the plunge. Katie is the female lead in this story. She enters into this pen pal program for the incarcerated as a way to rid herself of her own loneliness.
It’s a romance, so you have to figure that she’s going to fall for this guy. I think that was my biggest hurdle when I was reading this. I couldn’t figure out a logical reason why she would fall for someone that is in jail, but hey, it happens. Then, to top it off, Logan has issues with any race besides his own. He’s got a troubled past and it affects they way he views people. I was waiting for the proverbial “shit to hit the fan.” I knew it was going to happen. After all, Katie is black but he thought she was white. It was like the elephant in the room. You know it’s there and the other parties are completely unaware. This could end badly. But it didn’t! There were a bumps in the road and it was a long one.
Some new information was brought to light and I felt better about rooting for their relationship. I almost felt like it was doomed to fail given his hatred. The romance between Logan and Katie is beautiful. My concern was still there though. He had this deep seated hatred towards other races and it’s not going to go away overnight…I get it. I just expected him to start warming up to it sooner than he did.
Back to where it went downhill for me….80%. I switched to the audiobook and felt like I had missed a few chapters. I couldn’t believe the direction it went in with what happened in the previous chapter. I literally rewound it several times, convinced that I missed something. I didn’t…and I really hate the way the last chapter ended. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for happy endings, but it didn’t feel realistic to me. The epilogue was definitely needed. It made me feel a little better knowing that he was working to change himself.
Inger Iversen was born in 1982 to Anne and Kaii Iversen. She lives in Virginia Beach with her overweight lap cat, Max and her tree hugging boyfriend Joshua. She spends 90 percent of her time in Barnes and Noble and the other ten pretending not to want to be in Barnes and Noble.
