Join us at Tales of the Ravenous Reader for 5 Days of Boldly Bookish, which includes a review of Break Me Like a Promise, an event recap of the Boldly Bookish Tour, and giveaways!

Inspired by the fairytale, The Frog Prince, Break Me Like a Promise is sure to shoot to the top of your favorite list in 2016. Within the first 5% of the book, I was utterly and completely sucked in and just could not put it down. I went to a music festival…Didn’t matter, I was reading. It’s THAT good.

Break Me is the second in the Once Upon a Crime Family series but it is not your typical sequel. While the world is the same as Hold Me Like a Breath, we see new and returning characters set after the events of the first book. You do not need to have read Hold Me to understand what’s happening in Break Me. In fact, Schmidt does an excellent job of outlining the important elements without feeling tedious. Indeed, this is a sequel that keeps fans and new readers engaged till the end.

We open the book to find Maggie, a strong girl who’s gone through the tragedy of losing the love of her life, Carter, in a space where she needs to process her loss. She’s definitely not over it and her grief is very real. The way she describes their relationship will make you feel all of the things she does, the good, bad, and ugly. Without being pun-y, this book will break you.

Enter Alex, the computer tech who is the perfect complement for Maggie. One caveat, he’s deathly ill and in need of a kidney transplant. Did I mention that Maggie’s family is in the black market organ trade? Oh, they are, and even that feels ok because while the implications of the Business being illegal are there, it’s hard to argue that everyone deserves access to lifesaving measures. Alex is not above blackmail to get what he wants and manages to finagle himself a kidney. Maggie’s father, who leads the Family and the Business, is not thrilled that Maggie let their secret out and wants to teach her the softer side of the Business, which she will some day take over. She ends up tasked with keeping Alex contained while they search for a donor.

While all this is going on, the Families are working on legalizing the organ trade business, which compromises Alex’s chance of getting a kidney. Maggie is not thrilled with being sidelined from this work while also being forced to spend her days with Alex while she’s trying to grieve. As with all fairytales, there are lessons learned and the inevitable HEA, though I won’t spill on what that really means. Plus there’s another book coming out so anything is possible!

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t absolutely love this book. I would have never picked it up if I wasn’t moderating the upcoming Boldly Bookish Tour and what a shame that would have been. The cover itself conveys so much about the story from the computer chip to the destroyed, bloody flower. Being in a crime Family is not all rainbows; there’s a certain risk and none of that is shielded in the book. There’s a lot of moral questioning that will have you thinking. But not too much thinking, because remember, we are on a deadline to get Alex a kidney here. I loved Maggie through all parts of her process, from the can’t-get-out-of-bed to the denial parts to the place where she eventually moves through it. The romance is believable and there are FEELS allllllll over this book. Schmidt’s writing is strong and engaging; it never misses a beat. There’s never a slow or dull moment in the book. If you look closely, you can see the elements of The Frog Prince but this is not a simple retelling; more-so that the themes and personality elements are closer to the original.

***Bloomsbury provided me a copy of Break Me to prepare for moderating the upcoming Boldly Bookish tour. My thoughts and SQUEEs are all my own and not influenced by this.