Bro
MORE THAN ANYTHING
Series: Broken Pieces #1
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Author: Natasha Anders
Release Date: June 11, 2019
Two lovers strive to trade a grim past for a bright future in this story of bittersweet yearning.
Tina Jenson belongs to the same social stratum as Harris Chapman, but he’s out of her league—at least that’s what she thinks before they jump in bed together. It’s the perfect night, but when she overhears crude, hurtful comments the next morning, she can’t get away fast enough.
Ten years later, Tina’s life is a mess. That night with Harris didn’t just hurt her feelings; it started a cascade of disappointment and heartbreak. Every time she bumps into Harris, her heart twists inside out. She still wants him, but she’s harboring a painful secret from their night together that she’s not ready to reveal.
Crossed signals, high-society whispers, and shame have kept Tina and Harris apart for years, but deep down, they’re hungry for each other and eager to write their own rules. Can they let go of the past and find their way back to each other, or are the barriers between them too high and too strong?
Some pain was just too huge to be self-soothed away…
I have a general rule when it comes to Natasha Anders books; she writes them, I read them. The woman can write a grovel like no one’s business. And she’s the queen of creating these perfectly imperfect and broken characters that you can’t help but fall for.
The second I read the blurb for this book, I was foaming at the mouth to get my hands on it. But I have to admit that it was not quite what I had expected. I thought I was going to read about a devastating hurt, and then a delicious grovel. And while this book was definitely one of those things, it wasn’t exactly. Confused? I was too. But let me explain.
Harris Chapman has been a boy that young Tina always had a crush on and who was entirely out of her league. Tina is a girl that was a slave to her own self consciousness about her looks and weights, and the cruel words of her classmates didn’t always help. One night with the boy of her dreams suddenly ended in the biggest heartbreak of her life. But Harris is not the cruel guy she’s made him out to be all these years. In actuality, Harris is a sweet, down to earth type of man that’s spent over ten years trying to make things right with Tina while she spent them avoiding him.
And while I enjoyed the story, I struggled quite a bit with liking Tina. To be perfectly frank, I never really warmed up to her. This is a woman that’s spent ten years in a spiral over something that could have been fixed over letting Harris have a second of her time and a conversation. Don’t get me wrong, this is a woman with some deep rooted pain and it’s no little thing. But I also wanted her to get her life together and finally shake herself out of her neurosis. She’s so scatterbrained and flighty, that it took almost the entirety of the book for me to connect to her. I felt for her, I really did. But I also wanted to shake her throughout most of the story.
Harris is so sweet and patient with her. He tries so hard, only to be shut down time and time again.
Now here’s the thing, though, while I struggled to connect with Tina, I still found myself enjoying the book. There’s a somewhat of a secondary plot that gets unraveled here with Harris’s twin brother and Tina’s best friend that I was dang near rabid to get more on. I loved the cute small town setting and the crossover with some of the previous characters we got in Natasha’s Alpha Men series. And even though Tina frustrated me, I still couldn’t put the book down and read it in practically one sitting. Was it my favorite story, probably not. But it sure set the stage for the next book and it did ultimately wrap up quite sweetly and made me finally see Tina in a different light.
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