Self-Published | September 28, 2015 | Contemporary Romance
Broken, book 2
★★★★
SOURCE: ENTICING JOURNEY
TEN YEARS AGO, I fell in love with a boy.
In the blink of an eye, the boy I loved was ripped from me.
TEN YEARS LATER, I ran into the boy I had lost.
Yet, he's no longer a boy.
He's a man.
A deeply wounded man.
Dustin Adams was once known for his down to earth, care free spirit. He was the well rounded kid with a promising future.
Until the girl he loved was yanked from his life.
Now, Dustin is known for his distance and the coldness he radiates. He is simply a shell of the boy he once was.
Living the Army life, the close calls he's surrounded by daily have done nothing but further harden his heart.
Until the girl he once loved reappears in his life.
Can what they shared so long ago be restored? Or is Dustin fated to live a life of brokenness?
{ review } .
This one was a difficult one to rate, which is why I sat on it for a couple of weeks.
On the one hand, the story was written beautifully. The day Dustin doesn't want to go to church is the day he goes and meets the girl who will steal his heart forever. She's the pastor's daughter, though, and her family wants different for her than him. That doesn't stop these two from falling in love -- but like any Romeo and Juliet story, they were thrown apart.
Dustin proves from the beginning of the story what a gentleman he could be, but Echo, too, proves early on that she has a strong sense of loyalty. Even though she didn't know the outcome, she didn't know how life would play out, she had things in her life she could have kept hidden but allowed the truth to be out there, whether as a rebellion to her parents or as an endowment to her heart.
So... on the other hand...
The time frame of the story is grand -- but I think that actually works for these two. Both have their own battles they have to go through and both had some growing up to do -- and their lives forced them to grow up likely faster than others their ages. However, my biggest disappointment with this story would be the emotion.
There were times the emotion was huge and greatly written. And then there were others that the emotion would build and buildandbuildandBUILD and then? Plummet. It went nowhere. I felt that there could have been more, a little bit more reached for and just a little bit more achieved.
Regardless...
I enjoyed the side characters here, too! And I'm not a side character type gal. I loved the playfulness that is Dustin's brother, Dax, and his lady, Lynsie -- their Magic Mike moment made me laugh, no doubt. Their book is definitely on my to-read pile for when I have a spare 5 hours!
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