Mikee (ReadWithMikee)'s Reviews > Breaking Her

"You learn more about someone when you're fighting them than you do loving them. Things you can only learn from war."

I really wanted to like this and I've actually been eagerly waiting forever for its release, but this book did not make sense to me.

I was getting bored out of my mind because the story just kept bouncing back and forth between past and present to the point where the story wasn't even moving or going anywhere, which just made things even more confusing and slow. I felt like Breaking Him did a much better job at alternating between past and present whereas Breaking Her just stagnated.

On top of that, all the characters were getting on my nerves. I got annoyed with them in the past and got even more annoyed with them in the present. Every character in this book was just fucked up in the head one way or another. We got bitchy mom. Bitchy, sneaky Tiffany. Alcoholic grandmother. Perverted prostitute-loving dad. Drug dealing deadbeat father. Pedophile police officer. The list just goes on and on. I was just overly frustrated with everything and everyone that I honestly couldn't even bring myself to enjoy the story anymore because of how terrible each and every character was.

Sure there were some hot, steamy sex scenes but even I couldn't enjoy it or take any of it seriously because the more I continued to read about Dante and Scarlett, the more I cringed at how evidently unhealthy their relationship really was. There was the issue of trust, jealousy, and just too much baggage coming from both sides.

Dante was just too overprotective and overbearing at times that I felt like even I was being suffocated. He was just holding Scarlett back in so many ways and I felt like the author just kept trying to redeem him in every situation by having Dante eventually relent to her wishes. Sure he was trying to protect her but to be honest, the last thing that Scarlett needed was to be tied down and held back. If anything, she needed to get out there in the world and leave her past behind, and that included even Dante. She had so much baggage of her own to deal with and she didn't need Dante's as well holding her down when she needed to desperately get back up and really start to live her life. If she was going to end up with a Durant, I honestly would've preferred Bastian over Dante any day.

I mean I am glad that Dante and Scarlett got their happy ending and all. I was all for Dante and Scarlett in Breaking Him but this story didn't go how I was expecting it to go. I'm all for unpredictability, but things got too dramatic and too over the top, and because of that, the story just became too crazy and unrealistic. Everything I enjoyed in Breaking Him just sort of unraveled into this huge, ugly mess in Breaking Her and pretty much ruined everything I came to love about the first book.

R.K. is still one hell of a writer, don't get me wrong, but this one just didn't go up to par with Breaking Him. The Love is War duology is actually my first time reading anything by R.K. Lilley and although I didn't like Breaking Her all that much, I've become a fan of her work and really look forward to reading her other books.