304 Publishing Company, $3.99, ISBN 978-1005419592
Contemporary Romance, 2017
Emery Stone has broken up with her now ex-boyfriend, and it’s a good thing because Chiquita Dennie’s Broken is not one of those “five men and one woman all in love” romance stories. Well, that and he had a pregnant girlfriend on the side and he’s super jealous about Emery having guy friends.
To get the breakup out of her system, our heroine has a one howling sexy night stand with Jackson Pierce.
“Please, call me Jackson.”
“I prefer Mr. Pierce. Brent would have a fit if I didn’t properly address his friend and client correctly.”
“You’re fine, Emery. Whatever Jackson needs, give it to him. Nothing is off limits,” Brent said, and I stared into Jackson’s eyes, and he winked at me. I picked up the glass of water in front of me and took a sip to distract myself from the throbbing ache between my legs.
Don’t give the author that look, people. He’s hot and a billionaire. When the guy is like that, everything is okay.
Wait… so her ex is her friend’s brother, and now she is going to do it with her boss’s client, and her boss also happens to be another friend of hers. Hasn’t our darling learned anything from her breakup? Don’t do a poo-poo at the same place that she has her meals!
The story of Emery and Jackson by itself is tad paper thin. Those two hit off easily, slip and slide without much ado, and the main drama between them boils down to rather childish antics from her part—you know how it is with romance heroines, having a besotted billionaire glued to their rear ends is the worst thing ever that can happen to them—and a series of communication breakdown and petty squabbles that arise as a result of this.
Then again, this is part of a series called Heart of Stone, and while this is a standalone story despite being also having a “Book 1” on the cover, the “Book 1” thing is there for a reason. The romance by itself won’t make for a long read, so the author pads the pages with various B-plot arcs that are meant to be seeds for the drama in future installments of this series.
Unfortunately, these B-plots aren’t any less one dimensional than the main romance. They are very shallow, the epitome of silly games played by rich people that need to find better things to do with their time.
Also, the women in here are all too willing to turn on one another and be petty without much prompting—let’s just say that there is a good reason why Emery seem to have only good friendships with the male characters here. As a result of this, let’s just say that I’m not looking forward to Angela’s story as, if anything, she comes off as even more emotionally stunted and petty than Emery when it comes to her designated happily ever after.
The most “grown-up” scenes here are those of Emery and her family, but even then, her mother and her grandmother often end up telling her to stop being a silly child and act like an adult in these scenes. Hence, I suspect that maybe the author knows that her heroine and the other characters are behaving like immature prats, so she is targeting a market that likes these kinds of characters.
All in all, I find the cast of this soap opera on the whole to be superficial, immature, and petty. Thus, I am not going to go out of my way to get my hands on the rest of the series.
