Fighting For Everything (Warrior Fight Club #1) by Laura Kaye #BookReview

If you’ve ever read anything by Laura Kaye, you know her stories pack a hell of a punch. But you don’t usually feel it right out of the gate. One of the first things we learn about Noah Cortez is that he’s partially blind and partially deaf from an IED overseas, where he lost most of the Marine unit he’d been fighting alongside.

He pressed his lips together as he pulled the first package out of the bag. It was…the worst wrapped gift he’d ever seen. Really, a total vintage Kristina job.
“So, you’re getting better,” he said, giving her the side eye. Her gaze narrowed.
“Shut up. I did good this time.”
“Let me see your fingers,” he said, because somehow she always gave herself paper cuts when she attempted to wrap a gift.
She stuffed them between her thighs, which eked a smile out of him. “Uh huh. That’s what I thought.”

This is a friends-to-lovers romance, and Noah and Kristina are adorable together. Their closeness as friends is 100% believable, so comfortable and easy-going that it’s no surprise when one seems to always know random trivia about the other and makes a joke about it.

One second he was standing at the door, the next he was all over her. Hands in her hair, forcing her head back and her mouth open to him. Lips sliding over hers, claiming, sucking, tongue penetrating. Body fused to hers, pushing her back, one stumbling step after another, and trying to get closer. And closer. And closer.
“Oh God,” Kristina moaned, her hands clutching at his neck, his shoulders, his hair.
“One night,” he said, lifting her and wrapping her thighs around his hips. Her ass felt so lush in his hands he couldn’t help squeezing.
“One night. I need you. Now. Here. Anywhere.”
Sucking and licking at her throat, he stalked down the hall toward her bedroom. “No. I want you under me.”

Laura Kaye’s character-building is, as always, on point. These characters made me laugh, made me grip my chest in sympathy, made me feel. They’re just so beautifully open and vulnerable, on the page even when not with each other. The dialogue just flows so naturally and the characters themselves are like the best friends you wish you’d always had—even the secondaries. Noah and Kristina smoke up the pages, too.

She stroked him, root to tip, root to tip, enjoying the little catches in his breath and flinches of his stomach muscles. “All hard again.”
“Your fault,” he said , his expression playful and full of challenge.
“Aw,” she said. “Well maybe I should help you out with this little problem.”
His brows slashed down. “Little?”
Kristina laughed. “I already complimented you on your size.”
He smirked. “That shit doesn’t get old.”

Noah’s journey in Fighting For Everything is intense and a little frightening. The Warrior Fight Club probably saves his life, he gets that close to the edge. And the supporting characters introduced in this book are strong.

But if you don’t have any plans tonight, then you should come out with me and meet some of my friends. Guys I suspect are just like you.”
“Just like me?” Noah asked, frowning.
Mo nodded. “Yeah. Guys with anger and transition problems. Guys for whom fighting and training provide exactly the kind of outlet and therapy they need to deal with those problems.”
Some of Noah’s angst bled away. “There’s therapy like that?”
“Yeah there is,” Mo said. “It’s called Warrior Fight Club.”

This series is going to be something special, so don’t miss a single book of it.

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Loving her is the biggest fight of his life…

Home from the Marines, Noah Cortez has a secret he doesn’t want his oldest friend, Kristina Moore, to know. It kills him to push her away, especially when he’s noticing just how sexy and confident she’s become in his absence. But, angry and full of fight, he’s not the same man anymore either. Which is why Warrior Fight Club sounds so good.

Kristina loves teaching, but she wants more out of life. She wants Noah—the boy she’s crushed on and waited for. Except Noah is all man now—in ways both oh so good and troubling, too. Still, she wants who he’s become—every war-hardened inch. And when they finally stop fighting their attraction, it’s everything Kristina never dared hope for.

But Noah is secretly spiraling, and when he lashes out, it threatens what he and Kristina have found. The brotherhood of the fight club helps him confront his demons, but only Noah can convince the woman he loves that he’s finally ready to fight for everything.