Reviewed by Donna

TITLE: Unbreak Broken

SERIES: Coming About #3

AUTHOR: J.K. Hogan

PUBLISHER: Wilde City Press

LENGTH: 98,476 Words

BLURB:

Rory Donovan’s life is a hot mess. His marriage is failing and he’s in intensive psychotherapy, working through the unfortunate side effects of memories of a childhood trauma. The only thing good in his life right now is his job—teaching photography to gifted high school students.

Harbor Patrol officer Bennett Foster is co-parenting his teenage daughter with his high school best friend Jessie. When he meets Addison’s teacher and realizes they’ve met before, he can’t get the sexy stranger out of his head.

Striking up a sexual-tension-filled friendship, together they must help an angsty teenager deal with a dying friend. Bennett must keep his little family from falling apart while Rory struggles to come to terms with his new reality. Somewhere along the way, most unexpectedly…love happens.

REVIEW:

I don’t know where to start with this book. There’s just so much that I could talk about, so many things I could focus on. It’s not that the book is jam packed with events and drama, but that the story and the characters have so many layers to discover, uncover, and appreciate.

Readers of this series will already be familiar with Rory, his wedding to Maia was the event that brought together the main characters in the first book and kicked off this Seattle based series. Even though Maia seemed like a wonderful girl, and Rory appeared to be perfectly happy, there was something about Rory that made me hope that he would be getting his own book. In book #2 we were teased with the fact that Rory’s marriage might not be going so well, and now here we are at the third book in the series, where we find Rory separating from his wife and discovering that he might not be as straight as he assumed.

Both Rory and Bennett are complex and interesting characters and we have the story told through both points of view. Both men have their own story and initially, the only link between them is Addison, Bennett’s teenage daughter, who is Rory’s favourite photography student. Next they discover they have friends in common, until the two men find their lives entwined, and they become friends. And Rory needs a friend as his life begins to unravel and he can no longer pull off his happy, easy going façade.

There’s no rush to get these characters into a relationship. This is a longer than average book, and the characters don’t really get together till about half way through the story. Which I thought was absolutely the right way to go. This isn’t just a story about a previously straight guy realizing that he’s gay, Rory is broken, and fixing him takes more than a couple of chapters and one magic penis. Actually what I love most about this author is her attention to detail. I noticed it while reading her last release and I noticed it again here. I’m a fan of GFY stories, although, that’s not exactly what this one is, but there’s always that thought of – why was this thirty year old man never attracted to another male before now? J.K. Hogan actually provides us with an absolutely credible and well thought through explanation of why that happens with Rory. But it’s not only major plot points that show attention to detail, it’s also smaller things, such as the fact that Rory can’t talk to his friends about everything he’s going through because the author has them off on a holiday.

A couple of other things worth noting; firstly, Addison is probably one of the best-written teen characters I’ve read in a while. In some ways she’s overly mature but that is understandable considering all she is facing. People who avoid books because of the presence of children should have absolutely no problem reading about Addy.

Secondly, I appreciated that Maia wasn’t turned into a bitch or a psycho in order to get her out of Rory’s life. Maia and Rory seemed perfect for each other in the first book and I was wondering how the author would deal with separating the two who were supposedly so in-love. Kudos to the author for not taking the easy route. Actually, no aspect of this story took the easy route.

I don’t believe that you need to read the first two books in the series before reading Unbreak Broken, however you may find you benefit from seeing Rory right from the beginning, when he’s happy and in-love with his fiancé. Only so you can witness the contrast in how he was, to the unhappy man he has become. Although this is definitely my favourite book of the series so far, the first two are certainly worth a read.

I couldn’t finish this review without mentioning that cover. It’s gorgeous and perfect and I love it like mad.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS:

Wilde City Press

Amazon