5 SMOOCHES!
SYNOPSIS:
From #1 New York Times bestseller Lauren Blakely comes a new standalone romance as you’ve never seen her before. Filled with raw emotion, heartbreak, hope, and humor, UNBREAK MY HEART explores how to heal, how to live, and how to love.
I didn’t break her heart, and she didn’t break mine — we broke each other’s.
I never stopped loving her, but time and distance played its cruel role in ripping us apart three years ago when she moved halfway around the world. Now after all those endless miles away, she’s returned . . . but I’m not the guy I was before.
Beautiful, kind, and loving, she’s the same — my hope. The only one who can make a day better, who can make me feel again with one kiss, one touch, one night.
There’s so much I have to put back in place now that I’m alone and on my own. Things I never wanted at the age of twenty-five. When I receive an unexpected letter that might hold the clues to everything I desperately need to understand about my family, I’m sure I have to follow it. But that means leaving her once more.
She says she’ll come with me, and having her by my side will unbreak my heart . . . or destroy it.
That’s the chance I have to take.
REVIEW:
I’ve made no secret of my love for Lauren Blakely’s contemporary romances and romantic comedies. They’re my drug of choice, my happy place, and the titles at the top of my TBR list. I wouldn’t say that I’ve pigeon-holed her, but those types of stories are what I’ve come to expect and look forward to from this author. So, when I read the blurb for Unbreak My Heart, I was very intrigued because it sounded so completely different than what I was used to from her. What I would soon learn, though, was that I was utterly unprepared for the torrent of feelings this novel would evoke in me and how greatly this story would affect me.
Lauren Blakely is renowned for her sexy, smart, witty heroes, and Andrew is definitely all of those things, but most prominently, he is a devastated, grief-stricken man in tremendous pain. She vividly captured the stark reality of Andrew’s anguish and sorrow with heart-piercing accuracy. It practically radiated off the page, billowing off my Kindle like steam from a hot cup of coffee. He was firmly stuck in the in-between, and he was so consumed by pain and grief that he just couldn’t see his way through it to the other side. Blakely painstakingly takes readers along on Andrew’s journey to the other side of grief. Her writing here was exceptional as she poignantly told his story in a creative and calculated way, allowing this character to mourn and grieve while moving him past it through what was essentially a hefty dose of tough love, bereavement style, meted out in the form of emotional discoveries, confrontations, realizations and resolutions. No doubt about it, Andrew’s story was definitely a power punch to the feels, and it was also so effectively portrayed that the reader can’t help but be moved by it.
Unbreak My Heart is more than a rollercoaster of tumultuous emotion, though. A two-pronged plot unfolds where Andrew’s grieving process collides with his much desired second-chance with Holland. The heaviness in the first arc of plot is brilliantly balanced by the gorgeous love story between Holland and Andrew in the second plot arc. Two lovers, clearly meant to be, victims of a wrong time, wrong place scenario, are offered a second chance at what seemingly is, once again, the wrong time. Their chemistry sizzled and the pull toward each other was practically inescapable. I was easily caught up in the aching and longing they felt for each other, but I admired Holland’s strength and foresight here. She was generous, thoughtful, selfless and a heroine wise well beyond her years. I wanted her happiness as much as I wanted Andrew’s. Romance is where Blakely always shines, and she eased the heartache doled out to readers through Andrew’s grief with a captivating, passionate love story that was brimming with hope and possibilities.
Unbreak My Heart was a breathtakingly epic story about love, loss and healing that rocked me to my core. Blakely’s words and writing affected me profoundly, and I finished this incredible novel with a new respect for an author I already revered. A heart-wrenchingly real, raw and, at times, difficult to bear tale, Blakely ultimately gave her readers a gloriously grand, sweeping love story that will stay with them long after they finish reading it. Unbreak My Heart by Lauren Blakely is one of the great love stories within the romantic fiction genre, and stories like this are precisely why I read romance. A top favorite for the year and a story I’d rate higher if I could, Lauren Blakely’s Unbreak My Heart gets five smooches from me.
~ Danielle Palumbo
