Review: I ALMOST LOVED THIS BOOK SO HARD...BUT ALMOST DOESN'T COUNT.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 20, 2014
"Sometimes, you can’t fix what’s broken and that’s okay. When you stop trying so hard to mend what can’t be mended, you can discover new things to fill in the spaces the broken ones leave behind. Other times, things have to be lost before you know what’s really gone. And sometimes, when something is gone, you have to learn to let it go so you can remember why you miss it so much."I’ve struggled with writing this review because I still don’t know exactly how I feel about this book. I’ve thought about it for several days and alot of different words come to mind but the one that lingers is...disappointed.I absolutely loved the first half of the book. As soon as I started reading All These Pieces of Me, I was charmed. By the time I finished the first couple of chapters, I was in love. LOVE. I wanted to sound the alerts and tell all my book loving friends that this was a book that had to be read. I was thinking All These Pieces of Me could definitely end up on my top ten books for 2014. Yep, 15 days into the year and that is how much I loved this book. Unfortunately, when I was feeling all those lovely feelings, I hadn't read the second half of the book yet. Once I did, my love affair was over. I was left feeling let down, confused, and a bit miffed with the author.I guess I'll start with the good!All These Pieces of Me is the story of Brandon and Emma. After meeting on the streets of Dallas, there is an immediate connection that I loved being witness to. Sure the meeting is kind of fanciful but instead of coming across as silly or stupid, I was charmed. I knew from the very beginning this wasn't going to be the typical romance I normally read and I was happy with that.Brandon is badly disfigured and has been unable to find a woman who can truly look beyond his scarred face and body to see the man beneath until he meets Emma. He is immediately captivated by her whimsical personality and her ability to see him, not his scars."Scars are just part of life and we all have them. Most of us are lucky, though, and have scars we can hide deep down inside. Most of us aren't forced to wear them on our face."Emma is one of my favorite heroines ever and I adored her from the very beginning. She’s awkward and quirky and a total delight. Her emotions have a honesty that are so refreshing to read. It’s obvious almost immediately that Emma has a uniqueness that is not easily explained. She struggles at times to express herself and her self-awareness of her struggle only made me love her more."I swear, the things that come out of my mouth and have me sounding like a five-year-old really piss me off sometimes. I wish I could talk the way that I think instead of stammering through life like a little girl who holds onto a damn teddy bear and continues to obsess over the color pink. I can't, though. My brain just doesn't work that way and I'm starting to think that it never will."It’s evident that she hasn’t always struggled as much."It goes back to the time before I was quiet. Back when I used to fill spaces… Back when my brain and mouth still communicated with one another on a more regular basis."She also eerily alludes to "a time before" throughout the book but does not give details of any past events that have affected her. Even without the details, I understood immediately that Emma had been hurt in some significant way and still struggled with that hurt. I couldn’t help but think of Emma as being beautifully damaged."We fit. We’re both in pieces, and those pieces fit."I loved both characters individually, but I loved them together even more. While initially they appear to have little in common it doesn’t take long to realize that Emma and Brandon work perfectly together, they balance each other out."Brandon Peters has way more going on underneath and it calls to me like it all matters. Like, if we were to put all our weird pieces together, we may be able to make something. Something almost complete. Something beautiful."The book is steamy but nothing over the top. Brandon and Emma have a certain chemistry I found very sexy"His golden eyes are watching everything, seeing me. Every part. Every piece. I want him to see it. “I want you to kiss me again.”His eyes go wide, his thumb stops and I watch his throat tighten as he swallows. “Em,”It’s a rough whisper dripping with uncertainty, but I hear the want in it, too. “Please,” I add and hope my sincerity is enough, because if he doesn’t kiss me soon, I may never come back from the dark edges creeping in.His grip tightens almost to the point of pain before he pulls me up against his chest. A whimper escapes me, but he captures it with his mouth against mine. We share warmth. We share one breath and then another. He moans, I lose my myself and he gives it all back to me.My fingers crawl up the tight space between our bodies until one hand can go no further and palms his chest. His heartbeat is strong and fills in all the cracks. My other hand breaks free and meets the line of his jaw as it moves in sequence with the devouring nature of his kiss. It isn’t just a kiss. It’s an embrace that holds me just as close to him as his arms now wrapped around my back. I hope he can feel what I’m trying to say, even if I’m not really sure what that is."I loved C.E Gilgore's writing right from the start. Some author's have the ability to string together words in a way that makes me feel like I'm reading poetry. I think the last author I came across that made me feel the same way was Mary Ann Rivers in her book The Story Guy. All the Pieces of Me is a totally different story then The Story Guy, but I found the same type of beauty in each author's writing.So I loved the characters, the writing, the romance was sexy...I was in love...right up until I wasn't.The blurb references that the book contains light BDSM elements and I certainly didn’t have any issues with that. Learning that Brandon had dominating tendencies was more than okay with me. How the author chose to write this portion of the story however, left me scratching my head. We learn Brandon owns a sex club that he and his friends go to every week-end and he is Dungeon Master. The whole introduction of the sex club seemed ridiculous. The details of the actual club and it's memebers seemed ridiculous. It felt like the author took a segment from another book and stuck it in the middle of this one. The entire portion of the BDSM story line felt very out of place in this book and was completely unnecessary. I'm not sure if the author included the BDSM plot because she wanted to tie together this book with other books she planned in the series or because she was trying to check off BDSM on some imaginary check list she had. The whole thing felt gimmicky and I can't emphasize enough how much it didn't work. It was a major detraction from the rest of the story, which up until this point, had been so beautifully told.Besides my disappointment over the inclusion of the BDSM plot, the last part of the book felt very rushed to me. There was a very important part of the story concerning Emma and her past that I don't think was given the importance it needed to be given. It was included but in a very wham-bam type of way. I definitely think more time should have been spent detailing what happened to Emma and how it affected her. I was left wanting more...Overall, I'm going to rate this as a 3.25.The first half of the book was a Five Star read for me and I'm disappointed the author chose to take the story in the direction she did. I have added the second book in the series to my TBR list. I'm getting burned out on the entire BDSM story line especially when it's not well done but I'm curious to see if I enjoy the author's writing as much in another book or if I just liked the voice she gave these two interesting charcters