Reviewed by Tori (Vicki)
TITLE: Starting Point 
SERIES: Turning Point #3
AUTHOR: N.R. Walker
NARRATOR: Sean Crisden
PUBLISHER: Love Lane Books
LENGTH: 8 hours 23 minutes
RELEASE DATE: May 30th, 2018
BLURB:
After going past the point of no return and finally reaching breaking point, the only thing Matthew Elliott can do now is start over.
Matthew Elliott is a recovering man. As an ex-cop and ex-fighter, his new job teaching kids at the local community gym about drug awareness and self-defense, is a little bit of both. His new focus on helping street kids is helping him heal, and with Kira by his side, he’s making strides.
Brother and sister, Rueben and Claudia, are homeless kids and they’re very much alone. As they strike a chord with Matt, he does everything in his power to help them.
But when Ruby and Claude need more help than he bargained for, it stops being about work, and starts being about home.
The day he met Kira, Matt’s life changed direction, and it’s only now he realizes that everything he’s been through was a lead up to this. It was never about endings. His life, his purpose, was just beginning.
STORY REVIEW:
In Breaking Point, Matt and Kira were both, well… broken and are now in need of some serious healing. This book gives them that chance.
Matt has taken over the FC and turned it into a community gym, with some MMA training still happening, but mostly it’s about kids. He focuses on teaching them about fitness, self-defense, drug awareness, heath issues, and is working on some ways to get at risk kids back to school. He is particularly working on getting Rueben and Claudia, homeless brother and sister, into a better situation. Ruby has some skill at fighting, but no education, so Matt begins by getting him to agree to a training program and an education program. Claude becomes Matt’s little shadow, and he begins to see what a dire situation these two kids are really in. Especially once he gets their past from Mitch, and sees that Ruby has begun running drugs for a pair of local hoodlums. Matt and Kira step in to help, to limited success.
On the home front, things are going well. Matt is in counseling, with Kira going along to some appointments. The two are beginning to rebuild the trust that Matt so damaged, and working on a healthier relationship. Matt is adapting to his deafness, and learning to live with bouts of vertigo. Yumi and Sal are around lots, especially once the men tell them about their engagement, and enlist Yumi as an overly enthusiastic wedding planner! At first Kira is concerned about Matt and his involvement with Claude and Ruby, but once he sees how bad things are for them, he’s all onboard to help. Unfortunately tragedy strikes.
I hate to say it, but I had forgotten that I was disappointed with this book when I read it. I really think that Kira and Matt were in a good place at the end of the last book, and I’m not convinced this was the best thing to do to them. I liked seeing them again, don’t get me wrong, but after the action and drama of the last two books, this one just didn’t do it for me. There certainly was drama in this one with Ruby and Claude, but I’m hit and miss on kids in the books that I read, and this one reminded me why I feel that way. I didn’t like what happened with them, I don’t want to say what that thing is, but it was un-necessarily dark and it disturbed me. The drama with Claude and Ruby overshadowed the healing and success of Matt and Kira’s relationship, and even though there is a good ending, it was soured for me based on the bad thing that happens.
But I do love Kira and Matt, and Yumi and Sal, and the dog they adopt…. I loved the sex scenes between them and how they felt more emotional and less violent since the last book. I loved seeing Arizona, Cody, and Boss, and Matt’s former coworkers, and I liked how things went with the community gym. This wasn’t my favorite of the series, but it was still a good book for me.
NARRATION REVIEW:
As in the last two books, the narration by Sean Crisden was perfect! I still totally love his portrayal of Yumi. I love that I could easily tell the voices of the male characters apart, and I wasn’t annoyed at his version of a little girl voice. I might have rated this book a little lower just by the story, but the narration brought it up for me!
RATING: 
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