UNBREAK MY HEART
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Author: Nicole Jacquelyn
Release Date: June 7, 2016
Formats: Trade Paperback & eBook
What do you do when your soul mate marries your best friend?
If you’re Kate Evans, you keep your friend Rachel, bond with her kids, and bury your feelings for her husband. The fact that Shane’s in the military and away for long periods helps-but when tragedy strikes, everything changes.
After Rachel, pregnant with her fourth child, dies in a car accident and the baby miraculously survives, Kate upends her entire life to share parenting duties. Then on the first anniversary of Rachel’s death, Kate and Shane take comfort in each other in a night that they both soon regret.
Shane’s been angry for a year, and now he feels guilty too – for sleeping with his wife’s best friend and liking it…liking her. Kate’s ability to read him like a book may have once sent Shane running, but their lives are forever entwined and they are growing closer.
Now with Shane deployed for seven months, Kate is on her own and struggling with being a single parent. Shane is loving and supportive from thousands of miles away, but his homecoming brings a betrayal Kate never saw coming. So Kate’s only choice is to fight for the future she deserves – with or without Shane…
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I don’t remember the drive to the hospital or even where I parked that afternoon. I can’t recall what the nurse looked like as she searched for Rachel’s name in their computer system or the walk toward the room where I waited for someone to speak to me.The first thing I remember clearly is the white-haired doctor’s kind face as he sat down across from me, and the young chaplain’s small smile as he chose the chair to my left. Their words became a litany that I would hear in my dreams for years.
My Rachel was gone, but her son was alive and in the NICU.
“Is there anyone you’d like for us to call? Any family or friends that you’d like to be here?”
The question jolted me out of the fog that seemed to be getting thicker and thicker around me. Dear God.
“I’ll make the calls,” I answered, looking blankly at the wall. “Can I have some privacy please?”
“Of course. I’ll be right outside if you need me,” the chaplain answered, reaching out to pat my hand. “I’ll take you up to the NICU when you’re ready.”
The room was silent after they left, and I fought the urge to scream at the top of my lungs just to hear it echo around me. I understood then why people hired mourners to wail at funerals. Sometimes the lack of sound is more painful than the anguished noise of a heart breaking.
My hands shook as I pulled my phone out of my front pocket and rested it on the table in front of me.
It only took a moment before the sound of ringing filled the room, and I rested my head in my hands as I stared at the name across the screen.
“Hello? Kate? What’s wrong?”
“Shane—” I said quietly, my voice hitching.
“What? Why are you calling me?” His voice was confused, but I could hear a small thread of panic in the urgency of his words.
“I need you to come to Tri-City Hospital,” I answered, tears rolling down my face and landing on the glass screen of my phone, distorting the letters and numbers.
“Who?” His voice was frantic, and I could hear him moving around, his breathing heavy.
“Rachel was in an accident.” I sobbed, covering my face to try and muffle the noise.
“No,” he argued desperately, as I heard two car doors shut almost simultaneously. “Is she okay?”
I shook my head, trying to catch my breath.
“Kate! Is she okay?” He screamed at me, his anguished voice filling the room as I’d wanted mine to just minutes before.
“No,” I answered through gritted teeth, feeling snot running down my upper lip as I heard him make a noise deep in his throat. “She’s gone.”
He didn’t say a word, and less than a second later, the connection was broken.
I rubbed at my forehead, trying to convince myself that it was all just a nightmare. Where was I supposed to be? What was I supposed to do now? My best friend in the entire world was there in that hospital, but not really. I couldn’t bear to see her. I couldn’t help her. Where the fuck was I supposed to go?”
I made my way to the NICU as quickly as I could, and within minutes, I was holding my new nephew in my arms. The nurses told me that he’d passed all of his tests with flying colors, and I was in awe as I sat down in a rocking chair, cradling him to my chest.
“You sure got a shitty beginning, little man,” I murmured against his fuzzy scalp, rocking back and forth gently. “I’m so sorry, buddy. You’re probably missing your mama and that warm bubble you’ve been in for so long. I can’t help you there.”
I sniffled, closing my eyes as tears rolled down my cheeks. My whole body ached, and even though I had that little boy in my arms, the whole day seemed like some sort of surreal dream, foggy in some parts and crystal clear in others. I wanted to hop up and take his sleeping, little form to Rachel, to tease her about the weird Mohawk thing he was sporting and make joking comments about how men always seem to sleep through the hard parts of life. I wanted to see her smile proudly at the sturdy boy she’d produced and grumble that I was hogging him.
I wanted everything to be different.
I hummed softly with my eyes closed for a long time, holding the baby close to me. It was quiet where we sat, nothing breaking up the stillness of the room until I heard someone open the door.
“There he is,” the nurse murmured from the doorway.
My eyes popped open to see Shane’s ravaged face just feet from me. He looked like he was barely holding on. I swallowed hard as his red rimmed eyes took in his son carefully before rising to meet mine.
“Is he okay?” he asked thickly, searching my face. I’d never seen him so frightened.
“He’s perfect,” I answered, my voice throbbing with emotion. “The nurses said he’s a rock star.”
He nodded twice, reaching up to cover his mouth with his hand, but before he could say another word, he was stumbling and falling to his knees with an almost inaudible sob.
DGR: What was your favorite scene to write in Unbreak My Heart and what is your favorite scene to read in Unbreak My Heart?
NJ: My favorite scene to write was probably the scene when Kate is singing to the kids over the phone. She was devastated but pulled it together to get her kids to sleep from a thousand miles away. That’s such a mom thing to do.
My favorite scene to read is when Shane is taking the kids back to California and Keller decides that he’s going to stay behind. He comes across as a bit of a brat in this story, but when the chips are down he’s worried about who’s going to be taking care of Kate. That’s Keller. He might not get his point across in a constructive way, but he feels things very deeply.
What can I say? I like the ones that seem to punch you right in the belly.
I’d pushed her aside for so long that there was no foundation to build on. Just a mess of shattered pieces that I’d crushed with a sledgehammer every time she’d grown closer than I was comfortable with.
God. GOD. This book. This heartbreaking, incredibly written, gut wrenching book. If it had any more of my favorite elements in it, I’d feel like it was custom written for me. I don’t remember the last time I read a book that gripped me the way this one did. To the point that I felt it on a visceral level. To the point that now days later after finishing it, I still can’t stop thinking about it. This was easily one of my top favorite reads this year. I picked it up and read it straight through because I couldn’t bear to put it down for even a second. I was an ugly crying, sniveling, raging mess the entire time and loved every painful second of it.
If The Unwanted Wife and Walk Through Fire had an angst baby, this book would be IT. I’m so book hungover right now, I can’t even form words.
Unbreak My Heart is an unbelievably gripping story of love and loss and second chances. This book absolutely owned my heart. It was a compelling, angst-filled, emotional, and completely unputdownable read from beginning to finish. You will love to hate this hero and then you’ll just flat out love him.
I never needed you to fucking save me.”
Nicole Jacquelyn has a true gift with words because her characters are so incredibly compelling, you don’t just read about them, you experience them. There is not an ounce of telling in this book. Everything is shown, including the character descriptions. Yeah. I was blown away to say the least.
Shane is not an easy hero to love. As a matter of fact he will make you down right hate him. He will break your heart so many times over, you’ll wonder if there is a road back. But there is. Oh but there is.
You may be asking yourself if it’s possible to write a book with a dead spouse and not make the heroine feel like a consolation prize prize. And to you I say, abso-freaking-lutely.
Kate is a character with so much depth. She takes so much emotional punishment throughout this book that you want to say that she may be too forgiving. But the author instills so much growth in her throughout the story that you’ll love her more and more with each page.
I won’t give you anything about the plot, because to be quite honest, everything you need to know is in the blurb. Anything more than that will be a spoiler. And if there’s one thing I can recommend is to go into this book absolutely blind with NO preconceived notions.
Everything about this story is brilliant; from the feelings it will wrench from your very soul to the emotional mess it will leave you at the end of it. Shane and Kate’s story is not an easy one. It’s filled with pain and heart break but it’s also beautiful in its own right. You don’t read the characters’ journey, you experience it. Everything from the fundamental changes in their relationship to their feelings and everything in between.
If you’re questioning picking this up, don’t! If you’re a fellow angst-whore like me, if there’s one book I can recommend you read, it’s this one! Grab some tissues and some alcohol and prepare to read the whole night through because I guarantee this book will own every piece of you by the time you’re finished.
When Nicole Jacquelyn was eight and people asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she told them she wanted to be a mom. When she was 12, her answer changed to author. Her dreams stayed constant. First, she became a mom, and then during her senior year of college–with one daughter in first grade and the other in preschool–she sat down and wrote a story.
It’s official; I have PTKD (Post Traumatic Keri Disorder). The woman has ruined me. This book? I hope you all have your big girl panties on, because a walk through the meadows with unicorns it. Is. Not.
Jase has spent the last year of his life in hell. Now he’s free and the only thing burning inside him is revenge. It’s what he eats, breathes, and lives. The chain of events that began on that one bloody night a year ago that cost him him his family all lead back to one man; Tesarik. Only problem is? He’s so powerful he’s practically untouchable. So when the mystery man standing before him promises him the vengeance he seeks for the price of a favor, he knows that he may fight it but he’ll agree. The favor will take him deep into the bowels of the worst sort of human depravity. Into a something only known as The Seventh Circle; a group of men that get off on pain and death.
What begins is a story filled with heart-stopping moments, eroticism in a way only Keri Lake can write, and enough grit and darkness to leave you crying for your mama.
If you’ve read any book by this author, then you already know she’s not afraid to go to the very pits of darkness. She’ll take the readers deep into the bowels of the worst of humanity. Her writing is raw, gritty, and absolutely unapologetic.
Book slump officially over! #DoublePeenForTheWin
Written in dual first person POV, you get equal time in both Henry and Evan’s heads and it just makes the story that much better.
Let’s talk about things that trigger my one-clicker for a second here, shall we?
As for that ending? Well let’s just say I may or may not be rocking myself in a corner as we speak while I wait for July 25 to finally get here
Sparrow Raynes grew up the daughter of a drunken father who happened to work for one of the most feared men in the Boston underground. But now that man is dead, and his son who’s known to be even more ruthless is to be her husband…and she has no idea why other than it’s been arranged and her father agreed to it. So she’ll do it, but she won’t like it. In her eyes it’ll be a marriage in name only because no way can she give her heart to the devil with the steel-blue eyes that’s known as The Fixer. He’s ruthless, he’s cold-blooded, but she refused to cower from him like even the most deadly of the deadly underground seem to…
Sparrow was exactly the kind of gritty anti-hero that I needed. L.J. Shen was not afraid to stick true to her characters and pulled no punches to do so, and I respect the hell out of her for this. Yes, Troy did some things that may not sit right with some readers, but for this reader, I loved to hate it. See I love when an author takes risks to stay true to the characters and that was definitely the case here. This is no insta lust, insta-love, or insta-anything. Troy and Sparrow’s connection formed over time and it felt authentic because of that. Considering how Troy is and where he came from, I wouldn’t have bought it any other way.
L.J. spared no detail to make her story gritty and real. It was action packed, super sexy, and filled with twists and turns. It was enough to keep me at the edge of my seat the whole time and eagerly turning the pages to see what will happen next. The romance was sizzling hot and together with the plot it all came together perfectly.
My only minor quibble with the book was that it went a little much and too creative with the analogies at times. But that was such a minor thing compared to everything that I loved about it that I barely batted an eyelash at it.
You know when you read an epilogue that’s so good, it not only manages to be the perfect conclusion to the book but it actually flawlessly ties the entire series up. Like you have this amazingly delicious three-tiered cake, and it’s already prefect without anything, but then you add that icing that takes it from delicious to amazing? That’s what the epilogue of Appealed was to me. It was simple perfection. It deserves 5 stars just for that. But let’s talk about the actual book for a hot second here, shall we?
So at this point of the book, I’m as giddy as a Bilieber at a Justin Bieber concert. Their constant barbs in the courtroom and outside of it are laden with a heavy undercurrent of lust and you’re reading just waiting for them to give into the undeniable chemistry that’s brewing between them. And let’s be honest, what’s better than hate-to-lust? When it’s gloriously written entirely in the male POV and I fell hard for Brent from the very first chapter. He may be the happy-go-lucky friend of the group, but there was always something to him that just drew me. It may be because it’s not often you’ll read about a hero with a prosthetic leg that didn’t suffer his injury during a deployment. Or it may be because of his humor. But really it’s because when this man falls, he falls hard and he has no issue showing it and fighting for what he wants.
You know when you read the first book in a series and you love it so much that you don’t think anything can top it, but then you read the second and you love it just as much? So then you know that the chances of that continue to hold for the 3rd book are slim, right? In my experience, it’s tough to keep that sort of momentum going…unless, of course, you’re Elle Kennedy. Because not only was The Score absolutely fantastic, but it turned out to be my favorite in the series. And considering how much I loved the previous two books, that’s saying something.
What I love about Elle’s writing, is the depth that she gives her characters. And Dean certainly was no exception. He may be the hard partying manwhore with a crass sense of humor, but beneath that perfect exterior there’s so much more to him and you really get to see it blossom here.
