dbguide2's Reviews (863)

I liked this book for the most part. I had the audio and liked Hailey’s narrator. Unfortunately I didn’t like Wes’s at all. I’d waited for the audio a while and the ebook would be even longer so decided to just do it.

I like Wes – more than Noah, but Chris is still the best Jansen brother. I liked that Wes didn’t share Noah’s sentiment when it came to money (that it’s meant to be used for everything) and that he respected Hailey a lot for having her own business.

Hailey and Wes wercute together. And I’m saying this as a person who’s NOT into the friends-to-lovers trope. I’m not a fan of it. I either have to trust your recs or just happen upon the trope while reading. But I ended up liking it a lot! It fit the characters well and I’m glad it did and I liked it. Though I won’t go running to read all the friends-to-lovers books anyway. 

I loved Hailey almost as soon as we were introduced to her. She runs her own business and wants it to be successful. She doesn’t want people to help her out with her business just because they feel sorry for her. I’m glad that Noah wasn’t her love interest because I think he would very easily throw money at her and they would’ve clashed too much.

Wes fit her well. He gave her solid business advice without coming across as “I know better than you”. It made me like him a lot – happy to after his brother did me dirty. He did do a little “here, lemme throw money at you/the problem” but I’m glad Hailey stood up to him.

I liked how he’s analytical, a bit uptight, wanting to do things his way and Hailey’s just “lets do this”. It makes for a good balance and one that could go very far if they communicate well. Which they didn’t do all the time. That was one of the things that annoyed me – especially in the third act breakup. 

I did like this book but I do think it should’ve been worked on for longer. The pacing jumped all over the place and I found it difficult to keep up with “are you slow or fast now?” The plot also felt like it wasn’t tied down too much – I like my plots to be neat. Especially in a Contemporary Romance book – which I don’t read as much as other things. Like Fantasies I could accept a bit of a messy plot because there’s so many things to keep track of. With Romance books you’re always in the real world, so what’s your excuse?

As I’m reading more romance books I become more acquainted with the terms and discourse surrounding the genre. One term I’m very familiar with is the third act breakup. Mostly I’m fine with them. The other two books handled it okay (the second one a little less, but I could just be feeling that because of Noah); this book didn’t at all (handle it okay). I felt annoyed all throughout and just wanted to get it over with. Which I didn’t like because I liked the book otherwise! I didn’t understand why the breakup had to be that and why it took so long. I could see in the future they might run into further miscommunication issues if they don’t work it out. 

I was drawn in by basically the first chapter and didn’t want let go of the book anywhere in my reading of it. I love social media and texting in books and I think it added to the enjoyment of this book even more – specifically because during COVID there was such a large uptick of us being online and communicating with each other – although I just do that anyway. 

Ezra and Oliver were so so cute. I liked how they went from “I’m messaging you because I need to” and then moved into the “starting to text for fun” group and then “I’m chatting with you several times a day” and then eventually into the super cute “relationship messaging”. I really enjoyed being able to join them in moving into all those different stages. 
 

I liked how Ezra was more than he seemed at first. That on the surface and probably to a lot of people who knew his surname and family – they would probably think him arrogant and self-absorbed. But he most certainly wasn’t. He was kind and tried not to judge people – which is hard to do seeing as he was judged so much by his family. 

I loved that Oliver had Rheumatoid Arthritis. Well not that he had it – because it’s a difficult disease – but that a character shared a diagnosis with me. I sympathised with him so much about his pain and his frustrations of it all. I don’t have my vocal cords flaring up but as someone who (admittedly) talks a lot I can imagine that’ll be sore. But I liked that while he was (obviously) very aware of his diagnosis he tries the hardest to remain as positive as possible – which is hard anyway and then you add a pandemic! 

It’s extremely easy to become negative when you have a chronic illness and I think even more (easier) when the pandemic hit. So I definitely didn’t think less of Oliver when he pushed people away or got angry because as I said – it’s very easy to get angry/become negative. But through it all he still tried to have moments of happiness and positivity and those small moments are what helps a lot. 
 

When Ezra first called Oliver “Ollie” I awwed so loud I was glad I was in my room 😂. They were so so cute. Ezra finding and sending funny or weird sentences to Oliver was so funny – I hope Smith had fun writing them because I had fun reading them. Fiona (Oliver’s cat) and that she took an immediate liking to Ezra was definitely a draw for me too – cats are most certainly the way to my heart (and also make me rate books higher 😄). 

I also liked that the both of them were friends with the other’s friends. Or well that they had a mutual friend in Ryan and their other friends seemed to quickly slot together into a larger friendship group. That bode well for their relationship as time goes by plus also more friends being made! 
 

As I’m starting to read more romance books I’m obviously seeing a lot of third act conflicts/breakups – which I know a lot of readers have a lot to say about. Some like them, some don’t. It’s necessary vs it’s not – and so on the conversation goes. I’m on both sides of the conversation, I think? It can help but it’s also unnecessary in some books. Plus it depends on the writer because I thought the conflict in this book worked, but another romance book I read recently it didn’t work for me. 

In this book however it worked because it showed what they were struggling with but how they were starting to work through it. For Oliver it’s trying to live his life when his body makes it really hard – and how easy it is to push people away because you feel like you have to do it all by yourself. I think for Ezra it was the feeling of being pushed away, maybe even feeling like he’s unwanted (because of his family). Which is two difficult things to manage and probably issues that will continue to come up in the future. But I hope that in the future they’ll approach and manage it differently because they’ll be different people then. 

 This is under 300 pages and yet it felt more like 500 or something because it was extremely slow-paced. With the horror genre, if it’s slow-paced, I’m more inclined to like it if it’s a movie than a book. Nothing really against the book or its author – just my personal preference.

The book focuses on 3 friends who travel to a secluded cabin – it’s in the family of one of the men. I very much could not tell the friends apart, whoops, so I can’t really tell you anything about them? I remember things that happened to them before the book – leg injury, something about drowning or ice? But I can’t tell you their names or which name belongs to which character (and who had which incident happened to whom). Which, this book is like 98% solely these three men; so I should’ve known their names before the 50% mark or something. That’s half on me and half on the book, in my opinion? Like, of course you should make an effort to remember their names (even if your memory is bad like mine) and differentiating the characters and such. But also it’s up to the writer to make sure no two (or three) characters are the same. 

 

The horror was well-written, I’ll give it that. It’s a very slow one but it has all the elements of “spooky things start to happen and we start to notice them”. That’s something I like a lot. It’s fun to see the weird things happen – often before the characters do, because of course, they don’t know they’re in a horror book so they often don’t think xyz is weird until the weirdness increases/an actual injury occurs.

There was a big Indigenous/folk tale subplot but unfortunately it happened in the second half of the book – when I was already bored of most things – so I didn’t pay as much attention as I should’ve. I did like what I read – most of what I can remember – I liked. It tied in a lot with the main character’s family, but as I said, I don’t remember much so I think it made it all the more confusing to try to remember anything.

I am sad that I didn’t enjoy this as much as I thought I would because when I saw the comps I thought “oh wow yup I’ll love this extremely”. And it let me down because I didn’t really care about the characters much. I forgot most of the plot and basically everything that happened but the other books I read around the same time as The Broken Places I remember much better.