REVIEW: Broken Open (The Hurley Brothers, Book 2) by Lauren Dane
B Reviewsaddiction / Contemporary romance / Rock-Star5 Comments
Dear Ms. Dane,
I’ve really enjoyed your past stories of the Hurley Brothers, a group of rock stars who formed the band Sweet Hollow Ranch and have become a cultural phenomenon. I loved Damien and Paddy’s story, and am looking forward to Vaughan’s story next year, but the brother I was most intrigued by was Ezra.
Ezra is the eldest of the Hurley brothers. While he writes music and performs and produces all of their albums, he does not go on tour. That’s because Ezra is a junky. Or was a junky. While enjoying the first days of fame, Ezra succumbed to temptation and developed a heroin addiction. It took hitting rock bottom on stage and having his mother threaten to shoot up in front of him so she could see why he was so addicted to wake him up. As a result of that addiction, he lives his life with extreme control. He needs to control his environment, be conscious of his actions at all time, and he takes his responsibilities very seriously. He manages Sweet Hollow Ranch (not just the name of the band, but the name of the ranch that the brothers own together with their parents). He cares for his pets, tends the land, and creates music. And he’s fine with the status quo.
But when his brother Paddy gets involved with a women named Natalie, he is introduced to Tuesday Eastwood. Tuesday is Natalie’s best friend and roommate. She is gorgeous, self-sufficient and has suffered loss herself. Her husband, the love of her life, died of cancer a few years ago. After shutting herself down after his death and wandering aimlessly for a while, Tuesday has settled in Hood River with Natalie. She owns a successful framing business and designs beautiful jewelry. She’s confident and smart. She owns her pain and her past. Ezra is immediately attracted. Tuesday makes him feel things he hasn’t felt before. She challenges him to let go of his guilt and pain over hurting his family so badly. They strike up a friendship that has a definite spark, and they circle towards a deeper relationship. But their shared foundation of pain is what initiates the friendship and as they become closer, Ezra realizes that he’s been living only half a life. It is Tuesday that makes up his other half, and he wants nothing more than to be with her. But is Tuesday ready to love as deeply as she did in the past?
I’d call this book a character driven romance. While Ezra and Tuesday have difficult pasts that definitely inform both their characters, it is the slow coming together that makes this such a wonderful romance. Ezra is a really nuanced character, carrying a ton of guilt for his past actions, which honestly? Were reprehensible. Even though they are told in the past, it made me cringe to read about them. And Tuesday is a really together woman. I liked her immensely.
One of the things that I wish had been more of a focus in this book was the fact that Ezra is white and Tuesday is African American. I know a number of bi-racial couples and not one of them is together with the whole world just accepting it. I hear a lot of stories of racism, shaming and outright hostility towards couples of mixed race. For Ezra and Tuesday is just wasn’t an issue, which in one way is great, but the truth is, they’d have encountered bias sooner or later, and it felt like a missed opportunity to have you not really touch on it in an impactful way. That being said, I really enjoyed my time with Ezra and Tuesday and loved watching them fall in love. Final grade: B
Kind regards,
Kati
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I love the fact that the cover reflects the main characters. But what’s up with the author name being so big that you have to search for the book title? LOL
Great, in-depth review Kati. Thanks for the heads-up on the lack of racial conflict. I agree its something that wouldn’t happen in real life, because either someone is going to be overheard saying the wrong thing, or there’s always a friend or relative with a big mouth (usually at some sort of gathering) who thinks donning an “ethnic” voice is funny (and that goes for both races). However, sometimes that’s mild compared to public strangers who are either curious about aspects of the relationship, or outright vocally against race mixing.
I loved this one. Loved the first one too. Looking forward to the next.
I liked that this was a low-conflict, mostly character driven romance. Those are hard to find and hard to pull off. But I think she did a good job here.
I actually liked that there were no bouts of hostility because they were together. Tuesday has a few incidents of her own that was enough. Having lived in an IR marriage for 20 years I can say it is quite possible to be in an IR romance and not have any overt run ins with people who disapprove. The most we’ve had were stares. And unless you confront them, you can’t know what they’re staring at. Do they disapprove or are they blinded by our collective hotness?
Ugh. Just finished this. Posted a lengthy opinion elsewhere. To summarize (and this is just my opinion): If you enjoy ridiculously HOT characters–and you’ll be reminded over and over and over again just how hot/gorgeous/sexy they are– getting to know each other and enjoying each other’s company and also having great sex, but all while angsting about whether they ever could or should try to commit to each other because, you know, “damaged”, then this is the book for you. None of these tropes rang my bell. I only read because I loved the cover. But as Kati pointed out, race concerns were relatively fleeting in this book. On the one hand, it’s nice to have an interracial couple where race is not a front-and-center issue in the relationship–isn’t that what we idealists all want to see? But I think the author went overboard trying to remove any sort of curiosity/issue/concern about the interracial aspect of the relationship on the part of the H/h.
@Dallas: I enjoyed it for what it was: a contemporary with hawt main characters. About the lack of addressing possible racial tensions…I feel the writer was writing to her core audience. It sort of follows what mainstream readers say they do, and don’t want in a “multicultural” (Lord, how I truly dislike that word) romance. A romance is a romance. But I digress. It shows a hint of the “other” without showing just how uncomfortable daily living can/could be for that “other” by simply being herself, let alone being in an IR relationship. Let’s be real. I know the millennial generation is dating/marrying outside their race more than any other generation. That does not mean it’s seen as peachy by all of society. That’s the kernel of truth I find missing in mainstream IR romances. Some writers keep it safe to the point of why bother putting a PoC heroine, or hero, in the tale if she/he is going to still read like a non-PoC character. I don’t know if it’s the desire to be respectful to the “other” character or the desire not to jar sensitive readers if they were showed a slice of living that can be hairy at any given time a nut decides to intrude on that couple’s life. Triggers, I suppose. Anyway, it was an enjoyable effort, but like Kati I wanted some instance of racial tension, no matter how clueless or casual (be it from strangers or family) because, hey, it’s out there and the word “microaggression” doesn’t exist for nothing.
You know, I didn’t feel the racial thing was shoved under the covers as much as others do. The subject IS brought up and – let’s be honest here – the entire series is a more than a few steps away from reality. So, Tuesday has to deal with a racist at one point and the subject is discussed – although kinda dismissed by saying that Erza is so used to being ogled that he probably dismisses any attention they receive.
But in reality both books in this series has removed some reality. In both books the MCs do not have to deal with the reality of fame – so it makes sense that Tuesday and Erza don’t have to really deal with being an IR couple. In my opinion, the series is a little more fantastical than most contemporary rock star romances.