Review: Broken by M.L. Young

I have been looking forward to reading Broken since I first read the blurb. Unfortunately once I started reading this one, it just never really was able to fully come together. I thought that the main characters were likable enough, but I was just never fully engaged in this story. I thought that this one had a lot of promise, and the story could have been really good but it had a lot of areas that I thought could have used improvement.

Bailey was left as a child by her mother, and ever since her father has been a drunk. She goes to school and tries to avoid home as much as possible. She ends up going to stay with a friend of hers in Chicago to get out of town. While looking for a job and adjusting to city life, she ends up meeting a sexy fighter. They are attracted to each other and instantly hit it off. They start dating and things are going great until someone from Bailey's past reappears and threatens to ruin everything. Bailey is also struggling with a painful event in her past, and it makes it hard for her to get close to Kyle. Can Kyle and Bailey find a way to overcome her past and move forward together?

I liked Kyle. He was sweet and kind, and was really caring and patient. He accepted Bailey for who she was and let her know that he was always there for her. He let her take her time with everything and gave her space when she needed it. But his character had some conflicting beliefs to me, and no matter how much the author tried to reason it out with Kyle's explanations it just didn't work for me. He was a fighter but also a Buddhist. It was just really confusing. I thought that Bailey's character was also a bit weak. She would say one thing and then in the next sentence would say the complete opposite thing. She had trouble making up her mind, and she didn't really have anything to make her stand out. While she was likable, she wasn't overly special or memorable. I felt like Kyle and Bailey did have chemistry, and they got along great but there wasn't a lot of heat between them. This one was pretty light on the physical action, and I think that in this case the story suffered a bit for it.

I also felt like the dialogue needed some work. A lot of it was almost robotic feeling and just seemed pretty awkward at times. The whole book also felt sort of rushed to me. Things seemed to progress at an advanced rate, and it just wasn't natural to me. Without going into too many details, I just felt like Bailey's past incident came out of nowhere and them before long she isn't struggling with it anymore but all of a sudden she is capable of facing it down on her own. It just didn't seem realistic to me, and I thought that she was at times completely over it but then when it came to anything physical with Kyle all of a sudden it was right back to where she had been before. I do think that this book had some promise, but unfortunately it just fell short. While I did like Kyle and Bailey, this one just wasn't for me.

**Copy Provided by Author**

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