REVIEW - Broken by Lauren Layne

Synopsis:

When Olivia Middleton abandons the glamour of Park Avenue for a remote, coastal town in Maine, everyone assumes she’s being the kind do-gooder she’s always been. But Olivia has a secret: helping an injured war veteran reenter society isn’t about charity—it’s about penance. Only, Olivia’s client isn’t the grateful elderly man she’s expecting. Instead, he’s a brooding twenty-four-year-old who has no intention of being Olivia’s path to redemption . . . and whose smoldering gaze and forbidden touch might be her undoing.

Paul Langdon doesn’t need a mirror to show him he’s no longer the hotshot quarterback he was before the war. He knows he’s ugly—inside and out. He’ll do anything to stay in self-imposed exile, even accept his father’s ultimatum that Paul tolerate the newest caretaker for three months or lose his inheritance. But Paul doesn’t count on the beautiful twenty-two-year-old who makes him long for things that he can never have. And the more she slips past his defenses, the more keeping his distance is impossible.

Now Paul and Olivia have to decide: Will they help each other heal? Or are they forever broken?

REVIEW:

I'm always searching for different books or for books that are deep, full of emotions and which grabs you and shake you until you're dizzy because of everything that's in them. And this sounded like one of those and I'm glad to say that I was right.

Broken is not the best novel, in this 'genre' that I've read, because there were some parts when the characters irritated me, especially Olivia, or they were moving in circles and I was rolling my eyes.  But it was good, emotional, real and complexe. This book show us that people are bad and cruel and with ugly souls and I'n not talking just about the war, but about people in general too. Some of us are so superficial that if a person is not perfectly beautiful or well dressed or has a different skin colour or other nationality, they hit. Is not right! You can't hit that person with words or facts just because life was bad with him or something happened and wasn't his fault. 

I liked more Paul than Olivia and not because he was the male lead or because he was hurt and sad and I wanted to hug him. But because he was more complexe, more thoughtful, he knew how life was, being the daddy's boy and having everything, but he knew the war and ugly and scarry stuff too. Sometimes Olivia pissed me off with her pink obsession or just saying to Paul that he need to speak and move on. Yeah, she's right, but you can't move on from a thing like that so easy. You can't tell to people what happened, even to family, because is hard to understand and to feel what other felt or happened to him. Plus sometimes she seemed too childish comparing to her age and I can't eat that.

The story was good, I liked the dialogue between Paul and Olivia; the other characters seemed little and just there, no second glance acorded to them. And that kinda bothered me. Their relathionship grows gradually and yeah we have some talking and some sex and some kissing and then talking and Olivia starts yelling...and then Paul... it's a rollercoaster. 

If you like some New Adult or Romance but not so fluffy and with nice characters, especially Paul, then I highly recommend you to pick this up! You'll fly through it and feel a ton of different emotions in no time.

4/5

!Received through NetGalley!