Review: Breakaway

Breakaway by Sophia Henry
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

So, my bad, I saw the cover and requested the book based on it and the blurb without checking whether I had read anything by Sophia Henry before. I have, I DNF'd it.

The good news is that I didn't DNF this book but I got steadily more irritated as I continued to read.

First, the blurb that sold this book to me is totally misleading. On the assumption that it gets changed, can I just say that the second paragraph of the blurb references something that I as a reader didn't get told until well over halfway through the book. In fact, the blurb I read basically tells you the entire plot of the book, including all the "twists".

Luke Daniels is a pro-hockey player whose career was cut short prematurely after a tackle left him with a compressed disc in his neck. He has been in denial for the past twelve months, believing that if he obeys everything his doctors and physiotherapists tell him to do he will make it back. Without hockey he feels lost.

Brianna Collins is a paediatric oncology nurse, she has moved to Charlotte on a nursing rotation for a few months. On a St Patrick's Day city pub crawl with one of her new colleagues she joins her colleague's friends which include a certain hockey player who is described as looking like Jon Snow (from GoT) or Leonardo di Caprio.

What follows is standard smexy novella territory. Bree and Luke decide to become f$ck buddies and they proceed to have sex for what felt like a third of the book. At this point I was disappointed because I actually liked the plot and wanted more of that ... big mistake!

Of course Luke volunteers at the hospital where Bree works, in fact on the ward where she is stationed. The reason being that one of his team-mates has a son with terminal cancer who is on the ward.

I try not to be mean when I review books, I am conscious that I have been gifted a review copy but sometimes I can't hold back. I felt that this book just hit every cliche known to romance. Luke has a terrible childhood, Bree is the less-favoured sibling of millionaire parents. There's a cute moppet with cancer. Luke flirts with addictions. Heck, he wallows in self-pity for two days and he's suddenly an alcoholic. He gets prescribed pain killers by the doctor following his surgery and then he needs help to wean himself off them. As an aside, do doctors in the USA actually prescribe such dangerous drugs for someone recovery from back surgery? My husband has had three surgeries on his back and is taking a cocktail of strong pain-killers (for the pain) and he is perfectly capable of holding down a full-time job, operating heavy machinery, being around small children and is not addicted. Why would an otherwise healthy athlete become addicted to strong pain-killers and suddenly be unsafe around children in a hospital?

It felt as though there was no development of the characters, there was no evidence that Luke was depressed until we were told he was; he vacillated from happier than he'd ever been to depressed and looking to narcotics to dull the pain. He went from a naturally confident and cocky athlete, with millions in the bank and puck bunnies falling on the floor with their legs open to a self-pitying whiner who talks as though he's on the brink of food stamps. With absolutely no reasoning, not even an attempt to imply that his first person POV was him lying to himself.

In the first third of the book Bree is portrayed as a dirty-mouthed (in a nice way), sexually liberated woman looking for a hook-up with no strings attached. Then suddenly Luke is talking about her as if she's Mother Teresa and some sweet, innocent Pollyanna rolled into one. The characters changed direction so many times I got whiplash and the plot was so tired and cliched (and spoiled in the blurb) that I read on in disbelief.

I'm sure this book would appeal to others, heck its the fifth book in the series so lots of people must love them but definitely not for me.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Bumped for release.

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