Book safety, content warnings, and tropes down below.

[…] I knew better than to wish pain didn’t exist.

This was a cute and entertaining debut with some serious topics. I expect good things from this author’s future for sure. Atticus especially was a very sweet character.

The book seemed to try to do a lot in only a low amount of pages, and I wish the seriousness was just committed to a bit more. Everyone heals from trauma differently, but it seemed to happen a tad easily, going from the abused character being very scared to absolutely trusting a whole handful of people quite fast.

I read a lot of books with action and suspense so I was hoping for something more, but it was entertaining.

It was still good, and if I ignore the 11 uses of ‘bro’ during the book, I enjoyed the writing too.

?? Blanket spoiler warning ??

?? Tropes & tags ??
Past trauma
Hurt/comfort
Small town
Age gap
Mental health rep
Forced proximity
Hands-free orgasm
Found family

?? Content warning ??
Gun violence
Car crash (on page)
Domestic abuse (past, detailed flashbacks)
Physical abuse (past, detailed flashbacks)
Emotional abuse (past, detailed flashbacks)
Implied past sexual abuse (no details)
PTSD symptoms (MC, )
On-page panic attack
Ableist comments from abusive ex
Fatphobic comments from abusive ex
Injured MC
Mentions of the death of a parent (past, off page)
References to growing up in foster care
Medical procedures (e.g. x-rays, cast, med. examination)
Homelessness (MC)
Financial insecurity
Vomiting
MC hospitalized after car crash (concussion)
Side character shot and hospitalized
Cardiac arrest and stroke during surgery (side character)

??Book safety ??
Cheating: No
Other person drama: No
Breakup: No
POV: 1st person, dual
Genre: Contemporary romance
Pairing: M/M
Strict roles or versatile: Strict roles
Main characters’ age: 24 and 34
Series: Interconnected standalone
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Pages: 251
Happy ending: Yes






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17 s16 comments Brooke351 147

?? 3.5 stars ??

? How could it be that I’d escaped hell to finally find the thing I’d been looking for all my life? ?

Fractured Hope turned out to be a very soft and fluffy read, a lot fluffier than I was expecting given the blurb and heavy topics. The trauma and abuse Bodhi endured in his past is a focal point of the plot, but not overly descriptive or angsty, and the caring romance between him and Atticus is so overly sweet that you kind of forget about everything else.

It had its charm, and I d the big family vibes, the overwhelming comfort to make up for the hurt. The love was more on the insta side, but fits with the fast-paced storytelling. I kind of wanted some more drama, and the ending was a but anticlimactic, but for what it’s meant to be it was a pretty fun read.

Even if I didn’t fall in love with this, I’m still intrigued by Atticus’ brothers and will definitely keep an eye out for more of this series.

“I that you think of my house as home.” “Your house isn’t my home, Atticus, you are. You’re my home.”

I received a copy of this book from Gay Romance Reviews, and this is my honest review.

CW and tropes (spoilers):
- Small town
- Hurt/comfort
- Dyslexic MC
- Age gap (34 & 24)
- Injury caretaking
- Domestic violence
- Emotional abuse
- SA (implied, off page)
- Panic attacks and anxiety
- Stalking
- Gun violence
- PTSD
- Strict top/bottom
- Rimming & frotting
- Coming untouched sceneage-gap-trope hurt-comfort-trope small-town-and-cowboy-romance17 s2 comments Sarah309 89

Bad Things Happen Bingo but it's all in one book.

I feel the story has a solid foundation but there are a lot of things that didn't quite work for me. The plot, at its core, is Safe Haven (The Gay Remix). Our MC, Bodhi, runs away from his abusive, law enforcement shitstain boyfriend and finds love, family, and safety in a small town.

As a whole, it's just okay.

When you take a closer look, though, there's quite a few plot/character inconsistencies, odd punctuation choices, cringe-worthy moments, and (in my opinion) excessive injury occurrence.

This is one where I have to just list everything out to keep my thoughts organized, so...

?????? possible spoilers ahead ??????

Okay, so, the first and biggest thing that I found to be pretty jarring (, literally, I heard my brain come to a screeching halt) was when Atticus undressed Bodhi and literally bathed him naked WITHIN 24 HOURS OF MEETING EACH OTHER!?! I GET that Bodhi has an injured arm and leg but STILL!? I think Bodhi keeping his underwear on while in the bath would've made more sense for PERFECT STRANGERS, tbh. And what makes it worse is that Atticus didn't even stick around to help him get dressed afterwards??? So you're saying it was necessary for Atticus to help Bodhi get undressed but he's not needed for putting his clothes back on, which, arguably, is HARDER TO DO!? Idk, man...it was just weird...very unsexy.

Speaking of unsexy - I'm a little confused by the sex scenes where Atticus is more dominant. I'm all for some dirty talk but it felt it came out of nowhere. It felt the author just wanted to write a spicier scene (which is fine and more than welcome) but it has to make sense for the character.

Another character thing that didn't make sense, but for Bodhi, was how he would occasionally be a little bratty or throw some 'tude. There's plenty of examples throughout the book but the one that I can't get out of my head is probably the smallest one. It's the scene where (on their first day of meeting) after spending all day at the hospital, they get some food and Bodhi has to take his pain med. And the line basically says something about Bodhi drinking Atticus' Coke to take his med and looking at Atticus he's "daring him to protest"? I feel this is so small and silly, but , this kid, who has been FREAKING OUT about not having money to pay for hospital bills and not having a job and not being able to pay Atticus back for all his help and who seems so humble, is suddenly "I'm gonna drink your Coke and I dare you to say something about it!"??? LOOOL I feel so dumb cause it's SO SMALL but again, it is SO not in line with his character and even though it's a literal fucking SIP OF A DRINK, it somehow made ALL of his previous concerns about imposing on Atticus seem insincere. It just seemed bratty and NOT in a cute way.

Omg, SEB GETTING SHOT? And HAVING A STROKE?! And his brother literally describing him as "a shadow of his former self"? JESUS LOL I'm not an idiot - it's abundantly clear that this is the set up for Seb's future romance with his PT but woof, TOO MANY BAD THINGS. I love hurt/comfort more than anything so if I'm the one saying that?! There's literally a scene where the whole fam comes to the hospital because of Atticus' accident and everyone is distraught and all fucked up (poor Theo omg), and then WE HAVE TO DO IT ALL AGAIN FOR ANOTHER BROTHER!? TOO. MUCH. And as sweet as it is that Seb got hurt protecting Atticus from Derek, why the FUCK is Seb getting pulled into their plot? It felt the closure we got for Derek wasn't true closure because of it and it threw off the entire ending for Atticus & Bodhi's story.

Another thing that I noticed is that there was a lot of telling instead of showing. I find that this is pretty common in most debut novels but basically, instead of writing out a scene with either inner or spoken dialogue to show the MCs growing closer, an author writes something along the lines of "and then we talked for hours".

I'm getting tired of typing so we're just gonna rapid-fire the last few small nit-picky comments.

? overuse of the word "bro"
? overuse of exclamation points
? use of "yes" instead of "yeah" made the dialogue more formal than it needed to be

Rating: 2.5 rounded up to 3

?While I received a free e-arc from GRR, all thoughts are my own.?adult age-gap arcs ...more6 s ?.?vajiha?8 42

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