Review: Excellent start to an amazing adventure!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 4, 2014
Broken Dreams is unlike any other book I have read.  I don’t want to give away anything that isn’t in the blurb, so forgive me if I am evasive, but I hate it when reviews give away things that I didn’t know from what the author shared when telling us about their book.This is an excellent debut from Rissa Blakely.  I am one of those people who believe that the longer the book is, the better it is for me.  675 pages made me extremely happy.  I read this in two day, I was completely pulled into the story that is Broken Dreams, a tale about surviving, about love even when there are humongous obstacles in the path, about being broken and patching yourself together to survive another day,  and about friendships and what they can survive.Broken Dreams is full of action and has quite a bit of gore, which I loved.  It kept the book moving and made me want to know what was going to happen next.  What can these people survive?  What is going to be the breaking point?  It is not just about Elaina and Henry (their hot scenes together are incredibly steamy for those who look for that mixed in amongst their adventure), there is a whole group of friends trying to make it: Nick, Claire, Thomas, Sophie, and more that we come to meet as we go along this journey, each one playing their own integral role.The only critique I have is that I wish there was more … I don’t know what word I want … just more to the slower scenes, the conversations that weren’t arguments or full of adrenaline because they were fighting for their lives, they didn’t have that same level of energy, that same pull for me as the rest of the book.  Do not get me wrong, they still were great scenes, they just felt a little bit flatter to me compared to the rest of the book.Going through Henry’s past, bit by bit in the book was heart wrenching, hearing secrets come out in little pieces here and there added so much more intrigue to the plot and kept me guessing.  You do not know which way Rissa is going to turn in Broken Dreams.  This is one of those books where you don’t even try to guess ahead after the first couple of secrets come out because you realize that she is one step ahead of you at every turn.All in all excellent book and a really great start to what promises to be an amazing series.  I cannot wait to read the next one.