Let me just be honest here for a minute and let you know I expected to give this book only 3 stars after reading the summary and getting this book for free from Amazon. Yes, I judged a book on it's summary. I was wrong though, so so wrong. I would've paid full price for this book in hard back had I known how good it was going to be. Not only was I so attached I couldn't hear what anyone said when they talked to me, but I read it in just 3 hours.

I hate love triangles, I especially hate books about love triangles that are so unrealistic that there's humor in it. This was not the case. This book is told from the point of views of Maggie, the resident 21 year old with a bad reputation, William, the adorable good guy, and Asher, the much older, smoking hot rock star neighbor. Asher's description alone had me running away, I hate rock star books. Once again, I was dead wrong. Not only are the characters realistic and their stories completely true to real life, but I was ridiculously attached to them. Maggie is the connection for every character, from her past choices as a fifteen year old, later as a sophomore in college, and now as a 21 year old drop out with weight of the world on her shoulders. She's moved back to town after a year away and is the bridesmaid in a wedding, not just any wedding, but her sister's wedding to her ex-fiance, William. Maggie does everything to drop William, but he isn't giving up. To add fire to William's flame, Maggie has attracted the attention of rock star Asher, with a reputation of his own. William tries everything and you experience Maggie's frustration with everything, how she feels pulled in one direction only to run away. Asher brings out her story though, he coaxes her until she's trusting enough to let it all out, and there lies the love story.

I love that we didn't get everyone's stories up front, Lexi Ryan feeds you the information over time and you don't get the full history of all three main characters until the very end. She was successful in describing all of the characters, even the supporting cast, without giving you the silly details that you really don't care about. It all takes place in a small tiny town with a tiny local bar, a river, and the small town drama that follows. There's art, affairs, unsuccessful marriages, babies, and really steamy love scenes. I was completely hooked and I definitely recommend it to pretty much all my girlfriends who love a realistic romantic read, fan of love triangles or not. ( )

Unbreak Me was really good!
It was fast paced and kept me interested throughout the whole book.
It was emotional, romantic, frustrating at times, but all in all, A Great Read!

I loved how well the characters were developed. It was easy to connect to each one of them. Maggie however was my favorite. My heart hurt for all she went through. She had been stripped of her self confidence and dignity. She blamed herself for past mistakes. When Asher comes into the picture he shows her that she is worthy. He was an amazing add to the story. Yeah, he had his own demons and secrets, but he was kind, compassionate, and protective... A TOTAL BOOK BOYFRIEND.

This was an emotional story with tons of twists and turns. You are placed in the shoes of different characters and are left to feel the pulls of decision making. There was heart break, family struggles, and a little bit of a love triangle.

I recommend it to all readers 18 . I would have given it 5 stars, but I did become annoyed at times with Maggie's Self Loathing. ( )

This is a good story, plain and simple. This story could be made better with significant editing and minor tweaking in terms of passage of time, but is still a good story. I need to say that first and foremost because my observations below may not reflect this opinion. I like the characters so well that I wish the second book was completed so that I could continue to read about the other characters' stories (this assumes a second book would be edited significantly better than this first book).

This review will remain spoiler-free. This review is an assessment of the author's presentation of her story, not a critique of the story itself. The story itself is a good story. The presentation is where I find this book needs work. If, in reading this review, you are interested in a story summary, please refer to the book blurb or the writings of other reviewers.

I received this book from the author when I volunteered to read it in exchange for a review through Goodreads.com. The cover photo and layout caught my attention. The book blurb lured me in closer and I couldn't help but want to read this new adult contemporary romance despite a mere 3 reviews on Amazon and 7 reviews on Goodreads (I presume there is overlap between the two). I tend to shy away from books with so few reviews because there are too many well-crafted "finished" books available for me to use my precious few reading hours on books not already "tested" by others or not cleaned up by the author and/or an editor. When I volunteer to beta-read or read an ARC, I know that the said story is not fully polished and my expectations regarding consistencies, grammar, punctuation, story line flow and character development are lowered -- that is simply the nature of beta-reading or an ARC book.

While this book is neither stated as being in beta condition or ARC version, it is my opinion that this is not ready for readers because of the hundreds (yes, hundreds) of punctuation and grammatical errors. Indeed, there are times when fragmented sentences and run on sentences are appropriate to communicate the emotion or mood of a scene or scenes of the story. I do not believe, though, this is appropriate for nearly each and every page of a book. This story is significantly flawed by the rampant misuse and absence of commas, apostrophes, semicolons and even periods (sometimes compound sentences simply need to be broken into two or more sentences). There are a number of missing end quotes, misused pronouns and wrong words that forcefully pull the reader out of the story in order to reread the sentence(s) or passage to "fix" in the mind what was not written properly on the page. I am sorry to say that this caused me to remove two stars. I can guess that the author, other readers and potential readers will conclude that I am being overly harsh. The writing errors were so distracting and pulled me out of the story on nearly every page. I cannot honestly rate this as better than "it was ok", the description Goodreads associates to a two-star rating. In comparison, Amazon's rating system assigns three stars to "It's okay". So, that is how I have rated this book on these two sites.

Putting the extensive writing flaws aside, I feel the story could be made better with minor tweaking of the timeline in two ways. First, by providing more information about the "gap" year, the reader can better believe Ari's lingering concern with men. Second, by lengthening the time frame within which our Hero and heroine develop their relationship, the reader can better believe that He and She have truly made a soul connection to last a lifetime.

The opening chapter was fantastic in capturing the readers' attention and connecting the reader to the heroine, Ari. Despite being the naive age of 21, Ari comes across as intelligent, honest, and real. Once we are brought past this opener, this traumatic event, we jump in time by a year. This is an opportunity that the author did not take advantage of. I agree with another reviewer that this would be the perfect place in the story to reinforce to the reader how this traumatic event did indeed alter Ari's ability to be near men. Use this time to give Ari actions to support words. Instead, Ari and two of her closest friends declare her skittishness in a few sentences, but Ari's actions do not reinstate this understandable fear created by the traumatic event. Sometimes, whether in the real world or in a biblio-world, a person can make a statement and it is believable. Other times, the proffered statement is not believed because of contradictory actions. This is the case here; the author has Ari behave an a manner contradictory to what the reader is expected to believe. With two of the first three men she meets, she is remarkably, surprisingly not skittish. To the third (the best friend's boyfriend), she stiffens upon meeting when she shouldn't because of her love for, faith in and trust in this best friend and her judgment.

The other timing issue relates to the primary action of the story. The relationship that develops between the He and the She takes place in one month, with two months of abstinence due to misunderstanding/miscommunication. This timing is simply does not sound plausible with two educated, independent, intelligent characters. If the timing simply must be condensed, with raw unharnessed lustful emotions driving some scenes and nurturing moments deepening the relationship in other scenes, then at the minimum swap the time -- two months to develop the relationship and one month of abstinence. As it stands, these twenty-somethings, to this reader, are not convincingly driven by thoughtful consideration, but, instead, my really strong lustful emotions.

In an age when publishing and self-publishing books is barrier free, if an author wishes to make a career of story-telling, they need to "finish" their story -- spend time to edit, to clear the flaws, to fix the details, polish it to a gleaming shine. You wouldn't purchase a new car with scuffs, scrapes and scratches on the paint job, smoke infused into the fabric, missing side or rear view mirrors, or the wrong sized tires appropriate for the car. Indeed, the car may be a perfectly functioning machine, but the details, the selling points, are off and you will most likely move on to another option, another car. That analogy works with books, too. You may lure some readers, but a writing career cannot be made without a mastery use of your tool -- language. True, some readers may buy your first book, but they probably won't consider your next book or books if the writing is this marred. ( )

I read this book in my quest to find an NA that ties literary fiction with this new category. I've read a lot of NA (hell, I'm writing NA!) and have been disappointed in many of the books that have done very well because while they tell a compelling story, they often forget that writers are meant to be masters of language -- that there are millions of ways to tell a story and that language is the medium of our art.

Maybe I'll just stick to books by English professors. :) Lexi Ryan understands her medium and seems to really enjoy telling a story through beautifully crafted language.

The story took unexpected turns and was satisfying because the reader often knew things that the characters did not, upping the tension. But beyond that, I really enjoyed Ryan's manipulation of language and appreciated the clean editing of this book.

I became choked up at one point while reading this one -- the characters are compelling and heartbreaking. I enjoyed it from start to finish and would recommend this to other readers hoping to see the NA category become established through excellent writing and beautiful stories. ( )

4.5 stars A great read for sure ( )