Same Review as Book 1 except to say that adding a “voice” or chapters from Beck’s perspective were not needed and CW There is an attempted gang rape scene, read at your peril!!!!
Book (Audio): Broken Trust
Series: Dark Legacy
Genre: Dark/Bully Romance
By: Jaymin Eve , Tate James
Narrated by: Marnye Young , Jarred Kjack
Length: 11 hours, 16 minutes
To be honest, I really wanted to dislike this book and series after reading the jacket. I needed an easy listen and I figured it might be something to pick apart and dislike (sometimes I do hate-read, it is a thing), and the first part of this review will sound like I do. However, for whatever reason it still got four stars from me so evidently, I liked it.
I am not super familiar with most romance tropes yet, so maybe things I have a problem with are normal for the genre and that hopefully will explain to you why I am surprised about them.
The vast majority of the problems I have with this book deal with the ages of the characters. The main character is 17 1/2 (still legal in NY state) and the men are all about 20 years old that comprise Riles’s group. That is my problem, 17 and 20-year-olds are not that interesting, and making them interesting strains credulity (and since I love urban fantasy, sci-fiction, and traditional fantasy, I have a lot of credulity that can be strained).
If you want a school setting, just flip it make Riles a full-grown woman whose family all died except a sister that needs intense medical treatment, and Riles’s birth mother Katherine comes out and says she will take care of it, if Riles agrees to go to take over for her, but first, she has to attend a private university to gain a degree to help her on the board when she does takes over. See, we still have a university setting, but without questionably underage people present.
The guys themselves are a huge problem. No one at age 20 is a badass. I have friends that were in special forces at an earlier age, and I still wouldn’t call them a badass at 20. This is especially true for rich boys. Sure their life has been in danger, but I would put someone who has been over in Afghanistan for two years fighting for the US military over some rich boys who had training and might have had a few incidents.
Make the “boys” older. There is no reason to be 20 years old. If Beck is to be that badass, make him in his mid-30s. That gives you 15-20 years of living as an adult and that would qualify him (and the rest) as being a “badass”.
Also, a note for authors here. I grew up around very dangerous men. The kind people write books about (Vietnam Vet, 1% MC Outlaws) and not once did they ever call themselves badass. They were the goofiest set of guys you would ever be around… until shit hit the fan. No one who is a badass calls themselves “dangerous”, let alone calling themselves dangerous so many times.
Back at the age thing again, no one is taking over the board of a world controlling corporation at the age of 21. Especially since their parents are probably not any older than their early 50s at the most. Making the boys older and perhaps having them take over at the age of 35, or more likely when their parents are too old makes more sense.
The age thing goes on like this about details that bother me, and this really is 70-80% of the problems I have with the book.
The non-age problems mostly come into the emotional/verbal abusiveness that happens in the first two books between Beck and Riles. I don’t know if Bully Romance is really a thing, but maybe it’s just my taste that runs a little bit against that sort of thing. Although if that sort of thing bothers you as well, I can give you a spoiler that it mostly goes away in the third book.
The positives are the sex scenes are fairly interesting (but like I said, maybe there are way better ones out there since I am relatively new, but I enjoyed this) and to be honest something about the way Ms. Eve writes the story makes me want to keep reading (well listening because it’s the audio version I have).
She does well with the writing, I enjoyed it a lot and bought the next two without even pausing. I actually bought the next two before I was halfway done with the first, even while I was complaining about the age of the characters. If only she wrote this about older people, that would have gotten it a higher mark.
Oh and I suspect I will copy and paste this review for all three books because I am in the middle of the third book and I feel the same way.
A Girl U Should Know 