Review: BRUTAL TENDERNESS OR TERRIBLE LOVE??
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 28, 2013
"A BRUTAL TENDERNESS" by Marata Eros is titled as a companion novel to "A Terrible Love".  These are New Adult genre novels written in the `He Said, She Said' method - and "A Brutal Tenderness" is written from the first person perspective of the male lead character, FBI agent Cas Steele.  This is a 250+ page read priced at $5.69 (ouch!) published by Simon & Schuster.Overall, the story was a good read.  Since I was reading an advance copy (in exchange for this review) I'm going to assume that (HOPEFULLY!) the formatting, structural and grammatical errors will be cleaned up by time of its publishing on August 24th.  "A Brutal Tenderness" is written in the first person perspective, which as a reader I really don't like, so I find my feelings on the book a bit skewed.  I found it a bit too heavy on the stream-of-consciousness and pop psychology and a bit too light on the story in places.  I also had a hard time figuring out who was who / what / where.  I think that's why this is in the New Adult genre - because old ladies with Mom Brain like me just really feel the need to pull out a piece of paper to keep track of the players, especially in this situation where you are dealing with agents who flit between their real names and aliases.  Also, since this was written in first person, there isn't as much narrative explanation of who the people are -- you have to read and dig through to figure it all out.  This Mom Brain just got tired from doing that.Since I've not read "A Terrible Love", I can only assume I am not missing out on the basics of story - so I would feel comfortable saying that although this book is linked to the other, it's easily read as a standalone.  This is also marketed as an erotic romance, so do expect sex - but nothing too explicit or spicy.  Do I feel the urge to go read the book written from Jewell's point of view?  Eh.  NO.  Didn't hate this book - just didn't really like it due to the items mentioned above.  You, however, may have an ENTIRELY different take on it!