One of the things I don’t like in books, is when the main characters have this major problem between them, that could easily be solved by a quick conversation.  Fractured Freedom by Shain Rose absolutely does this.

I know that opening sentence kind of looks like I am painting this entire book to be bad, and that is very much NOT the case, but it does bother me quite a bit.  This book centers around our two main characters, Delilah and Dante.  Dante is a family friend, that is best friends with Delilah’s brothers, while Delilah is the younger sister who has had a crush on Dante for as long as she can remember.  The next logical step for her is to obviously trick Dante into taking her virginity, because that is totally not a crappy thing to do.

After losing her virginity, she and Dante decide to be a couple.  However, they do not tell anyone, because he is shipping out to go back to the military, and they want to wait until the entire family is together.  As this is a second change romance novel, OBVIOULSY this does not work out that way.  Why not you ask?  Because she got pregnant, and lost the baby, and then chose not to tell him about it.  Why tell him, when she can just steadfastly ignore him, and cause all kinds of problems.

While I have personally never lost a baby, I can imagine that it is a traumatic and awful event.  In Delilah’s case it is so traumatic that years later she is still trying to overcome it. This leads her to moving away from her friends and family to try and find herself.  In trying to find herself, she once again stumbles across Dante, and their lives weave together once again.

Now, the smut in this book, is not for the faint of heart.  I do want to be clear about that.  It is a mix of BDSM, voyeurism, and a few other things that if you are not into you will not have a good time.  For me however, this was perfect smut, and I greatly enjoyed reading it. 

The author also really does a great job at making the characters likable and real.  Seeing into their heads and seeing what they are dealing with was well done. 

However, I do need to circle back to my opening statement, is a lot of this plot could have been resolved by a conversation.  The issues between Dante and Delilah were gone over so many times, again and again that I started to get frustrated.  I wanted to scream at the characters and force them to sit down and talk to each other.  It is almost as bad as the plot device where the characters break up just to get back together.  I would have liked to see more of a plot as the characters mesh their lives and personalities together, rather than rehashing thinking they were not good enough for each other.

Overall – This was an excellent book with well thought out characters.  Even the side characters had a personality and plot that circled around them, leaving no flat characters.  However, the drama that happened, did not happen just once.  It happened over and over and over again, and I got irritated with rereading the same drama over and over again. 

Plot – 8/10

Characters – 10/10

Originality –  8/10

General Joy of Reading – 8/10

Overall Score – 34/40

Fractured Freedom – Shain Rose

Cost* – eBook is $3.99 and Paperback is $15.99.  This book is included on kindle unlimited.

*Cost is based upon what the book cost when book review is published