FRACTURED

TITLE: FRACTURED

AUTHOR: MICKIE B. ASHLING

Pages: 221

Date: 29/04/2014

Grade: 3.5

Details: A Bay Area Professionals book

            Received from Dreamspinner Press

            Through Love Romances and More

Own / Kindle

The blurb:

“Roque “Ro” Celdran dreams of a better life, far away from the hand-to-mouth existence of his migrant worker family. He moves to San Francisco to study Landscape Design but finds himself short of cash. Tony, Ro’s identical twin, comes up with a plan to help Ro make ends meet. The BDSM club Tony frequents is looking for gay men to act as submissives to the Dommes-in-training. Ro reluctantly takes the job and falls headfirst into a world he neither understands nor desires. 

Lance Roberts is the new doctor at the dental practice started by Scott Gregory and Robin Kennedy. On the surface, he seems to have it all: the Mensa IQ, blond and blue-eyed good looks, and the determination to make it in his competitive field. Underneath lies a frustrated Dom in search of the perfect sub who can handle his obsessive behavior and debilitating need for control. 

When Ro ends up in Lance’s dental chair, the last thing either one expects is a physical and mental connection. Ro’s attraction to “White Bread” never pans out, and Lance’s weakness for Latinos always leads to a dead end. Could this time be different? What happens between the two alphas leads to a lot of soul-searching and some surprising conclusions.”

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My thoughts:

I do like a book that starts right in the middle of the action, and ‘Fractured’ certainly does that. The very first thing the reader encounters is poor Roque – Ro - Celdran being beating into a pulp not knowing what has provoked the attack and unable to adequately defend himself.

The beating leaves Ro with severe damage to his mouth and teeth which brings him to Lance Roberts’ surgery and the free dental care he so desperately needs. From the moment the two man meet there is an attraction between them. While both of them try to deny it to themselves for a while, it isn’t long before they are spending more time together and not much longer before they act on the irresistible pull.

Both Lance and Ro have issues they’d prefer not to share. Lance tries to hide his ODC from the man he’s attracted to, afraid his compulsive need for order will scare the other man off. Conscious that Ro is as much of an alpha as he is, Lance also decides against sharing his need to dominate with Ro. Ro has things he’s ashamed of as well and fails to mention that he has been supplementing his income by working as a submissive in a BDSM club. He doesn’t believe in BDSM or that it could ever be a viable life-style or relationship choice and has no interest in ever exploring it further. Ro also fails to mention his troubled twin brother Tony and the huge chip his has on his shoulder about being Latino.

The slow emergence of their secrets initially only brings the two man closer together. But when everything Tony has done comes back to haunt Ro, the time for secrets is over. And even full disclosure might not be enough to safe the relationship between these two man who thought they’d at last found what they’d been looking for all along. Even without the secrets they are still two dominant males wanting to control their counterpart. A delicate and surprising balance will have to be found.

There were quite a few things in this book I really liked. It was refreshing to read a book in which the two main characters were equally flawed and needed each other to the same extend. The issues between these two men and the secrets they wanted or needed to keep made perfect sense and added interest to the story. I also really approved of the fact that the conflict in this book was not drawn out. I do prefer a story in which a problem is dealt with rather than allowed to linger on for chapters on end. And most of all, I loved how these two dominant man managed to find a way to make their relationship work. I adored the give and take between them, with both Lance and Ro willing to give themselves to their partner in ways they’d never considered before.

I did have one issue with this book though. 52% into the story there’s a huge ‘for-telling’ of what’s to come. I had no objection to knowing that trouble lay ahead – I had known that since the start of the book. Nor did it bother me that I those few lines revealed who would be the cause of the problems – that had been clear from the start as well. I didn’t like that the exact from the problem would take was spelled out in detail nor the way in which it was described in those few line. In fact this frustrated me so much that I had to put the book down and walk away from it and found myself reluctant to pick it up again. And that was a shame because up until that point I had loved the story and was really invested in the characters and their journey.

This was an interesting story that would have been better if it the author had been a little bit stingier with the information she shared with the reader, or had timed that sharing differently. Overall though, I loved spending time with Ro and Lance and enjoyed their torturous road to happiness.