Broken: Billionaire Series (Book 3) by Scarlett Avery
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I am doggedly working my way through this very short series, continually hoping I will find something to actually like about it…and I’m sorry, I’m just not finding it. As I have stated in another of my reviews on another book from this series, I get that this is an erotic series…so my review isn’t based on content shock by any means. Sex, explicit sex, raw language…I knew that this contained that type of subject matter going in….I’m fine with that. Once again however Ms. Avery has delivered such a short story that the plot happening around the sex scenes really needs to be much more compelling than it is and the stories are so short it’s really difficult for the reader to get invested in the story.
I was truly disappointed with how the relationship between Ciara and Diego was revealed (avoiding spoilers here.) First Ciara is absolutely crushed and basically crippled with grief, then suddenly with one conversation she’s accepting and joking around the next day?! I’m sorry I simply don’t buy it. She’s been absolutely devastated, her world has been turned upside down in more than one way, she’s crushed to the point that someone has to come get her from where she’s sitting stunned in a park, take her home, bathe her, force her to eat and basically babysit her all night because she is incapable of caring for herself….and suddenly all is good between those characters? That’s simply not realistic…that whole drama felt rushed.
One of my actual biggest complaints however is how often the author uses repetitive terms and dialogue, this author really needs to be aware of how often she does that and how it affects how the story reads. Ciara states flat-out the size of Nik’s endowments…every time she talks about it. I mean seriously, come up with another creative way to describe it; the reader get’s it! His size has been pounded into the readers brain as often as he’s pounded Ciara! It actually got so repetitive that it reminded me of how frequently Anastasia Steele said “Oh my!” in Fifty Shades of Grey…you could make a drinking game out of it and everyone would be blotto! There are other ways to describe this about him without using the same words over and over again, same goes with her ex Dylan when he shows back up.
Speaking of Dylan, I will say that the one redeeming factor this story had for me was the ending. That came out sounding a bit snarky but I don’t mean it that way, I actually did like Dylan showing back up (again, avoiding spoilers). This portion at the very least did leave me thinking, FINALLY! Something got my interest in the plot because up until that point the story between Nik and Ciara was losing interest for me fast! Well, aside from Nik being obviously based on Nicolas Coster Waldau in one of the previous books (aka Jamie Lannister from Game of Thrones)…and that’s never a bad image to have in my brain, but back to the review!
I still maintain that Ms. Avery needs to take all these little stories and compile them into one book. I truly feel it would read much better that way, the story may even come across better if she complied them all and the reader would actually have a story to become invested in. It could take these short stories from basically a written version of “Skinemax” to something a reader might want to read for more than the sex scenes…because lets face it, if I’m going to take the time to sit down and read a book I’d like to enjoy the story and not just skim it to get to the “juicy” parts.
I think too if she did compile her book that Ms. Avery (or her editor) would see her major issues with repetition very clearly and it would also illuminate where her plot needs more development. I know it’s no easy task for an author to compile stories; it require rewriting, editing and tweaking, but often…it’s well worth the effort.
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