Review: Emotional and romantic - the way romance should be
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 29, 2013
It seems that lately I have had the best reading experiences and have been quite generous with my ratings, but that's not altogether true.  I really have had the best reading experiences lately, but I haven't given a rating that wasn't deserved.  Such is the case with Broken: Secrets in Madison Falls by Rachel Hanna.  This book may be short, but it is well deserving of all 4.5 to 5 stars.  I can't remember reading a novella that had my eyes stinging and tearing in the first chapter and again in the last, but Broken did.  It isn't a hormonal imbalance, folks....it's all thanks to the story for bringing those emotions to the surface.Broken depicts the story of loss and fresh starts.  For Bella Clay, things were never easy.  Abused physically and sexually since the age of eight when she and her sister, Lori, were thrust into foster care after the sudden death of her mother, she has always been the strong one...the protector.  She purposefully did things to take the physical abuse away from her younger sister.  When Lori became pregnant at the age of fourteen, Bella took a job and helped care for her sister and nephew.  When money became tight, Bella moved from the small town in Georgia to California to pursue a modeling career.  When that turned out to be a scam, she had to do something to help provide financially for Lori and her young son, so she entered into a different world just to earn enough money to provide a decent life for her sister and nephew, which took this already broken woman and shattered her soul even more.  Bella's experiences made her strong, but they also put walls up around her heart; those walls were her only protection from life's injustices."Bella didn't let people in, because when she did, they hurt her.  As far as she was concerned, if you never loved, you never lost."Then she receives the worst phone call of her life and the devastating news that will force her to move back to Madison Falls in Georgia.  It's there that she meets Grant Brady, her nephew's elementary school teacher.Grant Brady is so swoon worthy, he has me wanting to leave my job as a high school teacher, move to Mayberry USA and seek a job in his elementary school just to stalk him.  He is beautiful inside and out.  He's experienced his own heartbreak in the past and is a little shy when it comes to opening his heart again.  But when he sees the beautiful Bella, he is smitten.  When he gets to know Bella, he just wants to take care of her; he doesn't pity her, but he genuinely wants to help her work through her past.  Against her wants, Bella opens up to Grant and learns to trust him, afraid the entire time that he will uncover the secrets to her recent past.  Grant is forgiving, but he also harbors his own secrets that are tied to Bella's childhood and isn't so sure that Bella can forgive him.  What makes Grant so beautiful is that he does learn of Bella's recent past, but he loves the real Bella, the strong Bella who protected her sister at all costs to herself.  He is a romancer - plain and simple, slow and steady."He was sexy, and he made her feel things that she'd never felt in her life.  Wanted.  Safe.  Secure.  Worthy."Rachel Hanna has written a sweet story with a broken woman who experiences healing and forgiveness through love.  Bella learns to not only forgive others, but also to forgive herself.  She is wise beyond her twenty-four years and it is that wisdom and willingness to forgive so easily that has Grant consumed by her.  Rachel Hanna has done an excellent job at developing the characters in the story and detailing the events for the reader to actually visualize the story as it unfolds.  To watch the development of the relationship between Grant and Bella was so refreshing.  By refreshing, I mean that it wasn't rushed and there wasn't a sudden lusting with the "quick to jump into sex" scenes.  There was actual romance...the casualness of the small town romance that grows from two people actually getting to know each other and spend time with one another - taking the good with the bad and loving the person from the inside-out, not the outside-in.  That was refreshing and lovely.  Although it is a short novella, I received the experience I would receive in a full blown novel.  This is my first reading of a book by Rachel Hanna, but it won't be my last.  I look forward to reading more of her work in the future.