THE FRACTURED HEART

THE FRACTURED HEART                        SCARLETT COLE

All things, when placed under pressure, eventually break or leave a mark.

Tattoo artist Brody "Cujo" Matthews knows how to keep things simple. In life and in love. Abandoned as a child by a mother who refused to stick around to raise three boys she didn't want, he's intent on staying clear of complicated women. The only things complicated in Cujo’s life are the killer tattoos he designs and inks. That all changes when he’s asked to help organize his best friend Trent's engagement party, which means working with Trent's fiancée's best friend, Drea, the definition of high maintenance and sizzling curves. And the one woman he doesn’t want to walk away from.

Andrea "Drea" Caron is broke and tired. After years of caring for her ailing mom, she's at the end of her rope trying to manage the piling medical bills, two jobs, and a life placed on hold. She certainly doesn’t need the added frustration of a sexy playboy tattoo artist messing up her best friend’s engagement party or her carefully balanced life. But when Drea witnesses the abduction of a woman from the café she works at, she can’t help but turn to Cujo who’s determined to prove to Drea that he’s someone she can count on forever…but as they attempt to bring the truth to light, someone is working to bring that forever to a sudden, deadly halt.

MY REVIEW:

     When you come from a broken home that alone is enough to scare you.  Finding out you were never wanted well…puts you in a whole other mindset all together.  Either way the fear of abandonment is something you never get over.  Some deal with it with humor and never allowing themselves to become attached, which would be Brody (Cujo) Matthews.  Or there is the closed off.  I got it all together, and yet say something I don’t like and I can bite your head off before you know it’s gone.  Which is Andrea (Drea) Caron.

     Brody is a guy who is ever evolving who was offered a scholarship to art school in Chicago yet didn’t go.  He secretly owns half of the tattoo business and several others yet wants no one to know.  He goes to the gym regularly and is active in outdoor sports.  He loves his father for sticking around when his mother bailed.  He loves his two brothers, sister-in-law, but especially his twin nieces.  Not to mention he holds his friendships dear as they do for him.  Hence going into business with Trent his best friend since kindergarten.

     Now Trent and Harper his girlfriend are getting married and they are having an engagement party that both Harper’s friend Drea and Cujo asked if they could help plan it. (Individually of course but you should have seen their faces when they were told they were working it together.  Right before the two left for a prearranged vacation.)  Which made Drea nervous.  She didn’t think Cujo had it in him to be serious and responsible enough to do it.  Yet, after their first meeting she was starting to question her own prejudgment of him.  With her background she had learned never to rely on men especially but people in general.

     You see Drea was meant for college, it was all set.  Until the day she came home to show her dad her perfect term paper and he was loading hefty bags with his things into a station wagon she had never seen before.  Never to return.  Leaving her to care for her mother with a deadly lung disease and all the bills.  Since then she has been working to provide for the family and now she is pulling two jobs with no end in sight and her mother berates her at every turn for either not being home to keep her company or not working enough to get her better machines or better foods.  She’s tired beyond words and as if that isn’t enough she saw a woman kidnapped by gunpoint.  Now the same gunman has come back looking for something the lady had but now he knows all about her and her family…

     Cujo is starting to have feelings he had never wanted to have for any woman and Drea’s having those same for him.  Where can it go?  Should it?  Or will the gunmen end all the romance before it starts?

     I so enjoyed this book it had a romance, mystery, suspense, it had sadness, joy, and pain.  You find yourself at times tensed up with your heart racing as things start to heat up in so many ways in the bedroom the most.  You won’t go wrong with this book it’s all that and a bag a chips.

I give this 5++++ stars.  Provided by netgalley.com. 

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