Reviewed by Carissa
TITLE: The Broken Road
AUTHOR: Anna Lee
PUBLISHER: Totally Bound
LENGTH: 89 pages
BLURB:
Confined to a wheelchair, Kason Tyler feels invisible, but Ryen Moore wants to show him what real love is all about.
Nearly a year and half ago, Kason Tyler’s life was turned upside down when a drunk driver hit his car. To make matters worse, Kason’s boyfriend Blake walked out on him while he was recovering. Now, confined to a wheelchair and insecure, Kason is afraid he’ll never find someone to see past it. Then he meets Ryen Moore in his coffee shop. Falling head over heels for Ryen is easy. When Blake keeps reappearing like a bad penny and tries to steal their happiness away, Kason puts his trust in Ryen and realizes that his broken road has led him to love.
REVIEW:
Kason is pretty sure it is all kinds of stupid to keep hanging around Ryen’s coffee shop. And not only just because he doesn’t really like coffee. But he figures if he hangs around long enough, maybe he will get the courage to finally ask Ryen out. So he waits. And watches. And pretends to drink enough coffee to shock a dead man back to life. It is probably best, then, that Ryen decided enough was enough and corners the man, kisses the man, and then asks the man out. And despite the fact that Kason can’t see how anyone could see past his wheelchair, and despite the fact that Ryen is still reeling from his brother’s death, these two find themselves exactly where they always wanted to be: home.
I have a bit of a weak spot for MCs who have to deal with disabilities. I like how they have to overcome and get used to a body that has let them down in some way. So when I went looking for a nice short to fill some of my time, this one jumped out at me.
Despite some of the implausibility about how the book ended with Kason’s ex, I found I really enjoyed this. The two guys here are cute together and I liked how Ryen was so not troubled by Kason’s issues. He just barreled thru all of Kason’s excuses and made the man see just how perfect they were together. And when Kason returned the favor, Ryen was smart enough to not just run off into the hills on some absurd notion of ‘protecting’ Kason from Ryen’s own issues.
I do wish that Blake hadn’t come across so two-dimensional. Yeah he is clearly a bit of a jerk, but the way he unraveled, and how quickly it happened seemed a bit too far-fetched. I’m not saying that there aren’t some truly horrible people out there, but I think his sleaze-baggyness could have been tempered with a bit of reality. Instead of an asshole who made some stupid decisions, Blake becomes a text-book villain. No reason or rhyme to why he is being all evil, other than to push the story into its climax.
Still, it was an enjoyable story, and I had fun reading it. It did a good job of working with the plot so the story didn’t drag on, but also it didn’t feel like we got shortchanged. The time jumps were handled very well, and I appreciate that. So other than my Blake issues, I liked this story quite a bit. If you have a bit of spare time you might want to check it out.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS:
Nice review Carissa. It’s often a two-dimensional bad guy that makes the story suffer for me too. They have to be just as believable in order to make the good guy’s struggle that much sweeter and the story that much better.
Yeah. What sucked was I could see the potential for Blake to be more that just a cliched villain, but the story kept veering away every time he could start to seem more than that. I have no problem with horrible, no-good, damn evil bad guys, I guess i just want them to be real and not just some so flat.
And I’m still not sure why Blake went batshit crazy at the end. He went from bad-ex to stalker/killer/psycho in like a blink of an eye.