Review: Real Men Don't Break Hearts

Reviewed by Shelly
 

Having taken over her grandmother’s gift shop, Ally Griffin learns that her ex-fiancé, Seth, is coming back into town to marry another woman. As if that’s not enough of a shocker, Seth’s cousin, Nate Hardy, has decided that he’s had enough of the city life and is moving back home. Nate knows that he’s got a lot to make up for his bad-boy childhood and he hopes that by giving back to the community, he’ll somehow have some peace and tranquility in his life.

I thought this story had great promise because who doesn’t love seeing the ‘good girl’ and ‘bad boy’ getting together and watching the sparks fly? I’m still not sure what happened to the great promise. For a book this long, character development and storytelling shouldn’t have been my problems, but they were.

Ally is a couple months behind on the rent for both the gift shop and the apartment above it; and once Nate comes back into town and is reintroduced to her, she finds out that he’s her new roommate. Right about here I was expecting to see sparks fly between these two. I didn’t get that nor did I feel that these two ever had that heated passion that I guess I was expecting from such a young couple. Maybe my expectations were too high.

Ally has always had a hate-hate relationship with Nate stemming from their childhood. She’s convinced that Nate was instrumental in Seth’s decision to not marry her. Here’s what I didn’t understand. Ally claims that she’s completely over Seth not marrying her, but she’s not over Nate’s involvement in that. Say what? If you’re over it - then you’re over all of it, right?

Ally was a likable enough character.  She was pleasant and nice. But I didn’t see her character develop into anything that she wasn’t in the beginning of the story.

Young Nate was a straight up thug and his equally thug big brother Robbie was his mentor. I’m not sure how he got from there to going to the city and becoming this super successful person. Maybe if I did, I could have appreciated his character more, but instead he came off as this arrogant jerk. Then somewhere along the line, Ally and Nate decide that they could have a short term fling. My opinion of Nate got increasingly worse.

Ally: ‘you want me’
Nate: ‘yeah, it’s crazy, I know’

Seriously dude, you’re this super successful city guy who gets all the girls he wants (and then some) and that’s the best line you could come up with? Trust me, I didn’t give Ally any credit for taking that and still saying – okay, may I please have another?

The secondary characters where a lot more fun to read about – Ally’s sister Jess, and her best friend Tyler who had a very warped thinking about relationships. There were some PG-13 sex scenes between Nate and Ally, a whole lot tamer that what I’m used to. In the end, I can’t say that I liked or didn’t like this story. I just thought the primary characters were unlikable and I really didn’t care about them at all. Just blah.

Happy Reading Folks!

Rating: C

*ARC Provided by Entangled

Click to purchase: Amazon

Real Men Don't Break Hearts 

by Coleen Kwan

Release Date: December 10, 2012

Publisher: Entangled