Reviewed by Taylin

TITLE: Broken Promises

SERIES: Broken #2

AUTHOR: Deja Black

PUBLISHER: eXtasy Books

LENGTH: 132 pages

RELEASE DATE: February 28, 2020

BLURB:

A widowed alpha is finally ready to love again, but his rejected mate left to protect his heart.

Beta Kristoff Dumanovsky has loved his alpha, Jeremiah Tolliver, for years. However, Jeremiah wasn’t ready to move on from the love he still had for his dead wife. When tragedy struck, Kristoff blamed his focus and left not only the Iroquois Pack but Jeremiah as well.

When Stefan Mukhankin, an enemy from Kristoff’s past threatens his safety, Jeremiah uses this as a reason to try and bring Kristoff home. It won’t be an easy battle.

Kristoff’s survived before and feels he’ll survive again. He was trained to elude the enemy even if it’s the man he loves, so Jeremiah is in for the fight of their lives.

Can an alpha help his mate believe their bond is true, or will his mate find yet another place to run?

REVIEW:

After someone else saved his Alpha, Kristoff ran. He left his pack and the man he loved – his Alpha. An Alpha who wound never love him back because he couldn’t move on from the loss of his wife.

Jeremiah knew what Kristoff was to him. He started as his Beta but had become much more. The Alpha didn’t realize how much more until Kristoff was no longer there. Jeremiah waited, hoping that Kristoff would return to him, but he didn’t. An outside threat gives Jeremiah the perfect excuse to go after Kristoff. It also presented the ideal opportunity for Alpha Jeremiah to go fetch the man he wanted as his Alpha Mate.

Stefan was human and out of jail. He’d been put there by Kristoff instead of killed. Time had Stefan learning about shifters and had him looking at Kristoff’s actions in a delusional light.  Stefan had convinced himself that Kristoff had him incarcerated for safety – an act of love. Free, Stefan is on a mission to show Kristoff that they were made for each other.

When Jeremiah meets Kristoff again, he makes no secret that he wants the man as his mate. He keeps voicing his devotion, but the number of promises that were broken between them made Kristoff skeptical and unwilling to believe what Jeremiah was finally offering. Love, commitment – a mate for life.

Broken Promises is book three in the series. There are books zero and one. While the story read well enough as a standalone, I can’t help feeling that reading the other two would be an advantage because there is clearly more to the backstory than is being revealed here. Kristoff was a Russian assassin, but from what I read, he only killed evil people – the child-snatchers and traffickers of the world. Broken Promises is not about this part of Kristoff’s life.

The story is told in the third person from three viewpoints, Kristoff, Jeremiah and Stephan. There is a fair amount of repetition, but that may seem significant to me because I read the story, cover to cover over two days. Otherwise, technically speaking, I found it pretty sound.

I enjoy reading the odd shifter story, and this one is no exception. There are trust issues, mingled with the underlying knowledge that one cannot deny their true mate. As the bad guy, Stefan is one sick puppy, belonging in a white jacket. Those he surrounds himself with are equally as broken.

I found Broken Promises to be a shifter hearts and flowers story mixed in with a dose of gore. Loved the angsty bits and my taste buds would have liked a bit more. The bloody part wasn’t exactly my bag, but it was appropriate for the genre and the characters – so kudos to the author for not holding back.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

eXtasy books

Amazon