Reviewed by Tori (Vicki)
TITLE: Breaking Point 
SERIES: Turning Point #2
AUTHOR: N.R. Walker
NARRATOR: Sean Crisden
PUBLISHER: Love Lane Books
LENGTH: 7 hours
RELEASE DATE: April 26th, 2018
BLURB:
A fight for what’s right becomes a fight for his life.
As guilt plagues him, Matthew Elliott’s world begins to spiral out of control. The harder he holds on, the more it slips through his fingers, and he’s helpless to stop it.
Entering into the underground cage-fighting scene, he starts out fighting for what’s right. The deeper he gets, the more guilt consumes him—the more pain he takes for his penance—and he’s soon fighting for more than justice.
He’s fighting for love.
He’s fighting for his life.
STORY REVIEW:
We first met Matt and Kira in Point of No Return, book one in the series. Matt is a narcotics detective, part of a team of four detectives in Los Angeles. Matt is single, gay, and very much in the closet. He’s not about to come out and risk his job, or his relationship with his coworkers who are his family since his is all gone. He’s shocked and somewhat annoyed to find himself attracted to Frankie, the new boxing trainer at the gym all of the local cops use. But whatever, he can resist the incredibly handsome, fit, sexy, talented man. Right? WRONG! Kira aka Frankie, is also in the closet, at least as far as his work life goes, especially at a gym full of cops. He’s out to his parents, Yumi and Sal, but no one else. He’s immediately attracted to Matt, his new boxing student, and disappointed when Matt isn’t willing to see him away from prying eyes…
Of course things don’t stay for long, the two become involved and are forced out of the closet when a Very Bad Dude kidnaps Kira and the wives/girlfriends of the other three detectives. Kira is injured protecting the women until they are all rescued, and Matt is left with a horrible case of guilt.
That leads us to Breaking Point. Matt has managed to fake it with everyone, including himself, and pretends the guilt he feels over Kira’s kidnapping isn’t an issue. But as this book progresses, it becomes very clear, that he is far from stable.
The big plot of this book is Matt going undercover as an MMA fighter to end a drug ring operating out of a fight center, and as a bonus, end the underground fighting ring that appears to be the cover for the drugs. So what Matt fakes now is his leaving the LAPD, even to Kira, who has no idea what is behind Matt’s sudden interest in MMA. But Kira is supportive of his boyfriend, and he sees that Matt does appear to have some talent and desire to do this so…. he goes along with it. Matt establishes himself at the FC, and makes some friends and some enemies.
But what he really does is fuck up his life, and that of Kira and his parents. Matt lies and deceives everyone, including himself, throughout this entire book, and it broke my fucking heart. This is a fairly violent book, describing all of Matt’s fights and injuries in detail, and I found it hard to read the first time through several years ago, and even harder to listen to this time. It’s possible that if I had remembered how hard it was for me to read, I might not have listened to it. It has a very different feel to it than the first book, and I found the changes to Matt’s personality hard to handle. Kira remains the sweet man that he was, and his parents are awesome, but every time Matt lied, or didn’t fess up to what he was doing, I began to hate him just a little bit. But damn, the underlaying plot was certainly exciting and had me on my toes.
I had a hard time with the violence in this book, but what I really had a hard time with was that Matt never tells Kira what he’s doing. Even after reading this once, and listening to it once, I still don’t understand the rational behind that decision. I do tend to find that plot device annoying, the lack of communication confounds me. I see it all the time in romance novels as a way to create drama, and the more times I read it, the more annoying it becomes. All Matt had to do was whisper in Kira’s ear that he was undercover and it would have made things so much easier. Even toward the end of the story before the really big bad thing happens, just something to give Kira an understanding of why he had a total personality transplant. It still could have been dramatic, it still could have been violent, it still could have gone down exactly as it did, but the hurt Matt causes Kira could have been minimized. I would have liked the book at lot more than I did, but I am not the author, and she had to write the story as she saw it. I do understand that, it’s her story to tell, I can only say what would have worked better for ME personally.
So I still love Matt and Kira, and their relationship. I love the dirty sex scenes between them, and the sweet sex scenes as well. I love it when they are happy, and when they are simply cooking dinner together. I especially love it when they are with Yumi and Sal. I absolutely love the relationship between Yumi and Matt. “Oh Matty…..” Yumi is such a great character! This book brings us new characters from the FC, Cody, Boss, and Arizona, loved all of them, especially Arizona.
I went back and forth on my rating for this one, On one hand I loved big parts of this book, and would have gone with a 4.5 heart review, even with the violence. But on the other hand, I seriously did not like the old lack-of-communication plot device, that brought it way down for me. But then there is the narration…. loved that! And I loved the ending. I feel like I default to 4 hearts too often, but I really think that’s where I’ll go with this one. Would have been 3 or 3.5, but the awesome narration brought it up.
NARRATION REVIEW:
Speaking of the narration… it’s perfect! Sean Crisden is great with voices and accents, he was a perfect choice for this series. I could easily tell Matt and Kira’s voices apart, and all of the men really. His voice for the bad guy was ominous, and I could see Arizona just from his voice. Then there is Yumi. Oh my god. How a strapping man like Sean Crisden is able to sound like a pissed off Japanese woman is beyond me! Even though I didn’t love the pain that Matt causes Kira, I loved that I could hear it clearly in Sean’s voices for Matt and Kira. If that makes any sense! So the awesome narration made up for some of the discomfort this book caused my heart.
RATING: 
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