Monday, February 24, 2020

Book Review: Beautiful Broken Control

I really don't love reading on my iPad because my eyes have a harder time getting information to my brain since my stroke (which this can't possibly make sense to you unless you were in this boat) but it helps when I get books I can finish in one sitting. Even if it is in the middle of the night.
Beautiful Broken Control - Catherine Cowles

A woman trying to rebuild her life.


Kennedy is doing all she can to escape, to prove that she’s not the monster her father was. A simple life of peace and service is all she needs.

A man haunted by a past he can’t forget.

Cain has buried his demons under layers of control and success. The only thing he needs is his company and his solitude. Certainly not a woman with captivating green eyes filled with ghosts so similar to his own.

He’s a reminder of the life she’s left behind. And she’s a threat to his tightly guarded control. As sparks fly between them, they discover that what they might need most is each other.

But with pasts like theirs...you never know when darkness might descend.

I am such a fan of romance novels but there are certain ones that just hit me right, and this is one of them.

We have Kennedy, the daughter of a man who went to prison for a Ponzi scheme that swindled people out of millions of dollars. Even though she was the one who sent him to prison, everyone hates her anyways. She hates herself and realizes everything that she's enjoyed in life is from someone else's hard work and it was stolen. It's hard to feel grateful for any of it. She decides to go as far as she can and ultimately ends up in Sutter Lake to start a new, significantly more modest, life. Alone.

Then we have Cain, the CEO of a prominent IT and Security company, who needs some time to clear his head after burying his mother he felt nothing for. She neglected him and his sister to the point his sister was brutally murdered and that has screwed Cain up pretty badly. Even worse, he's confident that someone in his company is selling information to a competitor and that could cause everything he's worked for to go under. He needs time to figure out how to sniff out the culprit and what to do about it, and he needs space away from the city that haunts him worse than he though. So he goes to Sutter Lake where his best friends live and he plans to adjust while in solitude.

But then fate brings Kennedy and Cain together and while Kennedy is terrified for anyone to learn of her true identity, Cain know something isn't quite right with her story so he's going to figure it out before one of his friends gets hurt.

Of course they start to fall for each other and I kind of loved it. A lot. They are both incredibly flawed and while they are working through their own guilt and traumas, they are doing it in two wildly different ways. Kennedy is focusing on her everyday gratitude and Cain is bottling it in and choosing to not discuss his sister and her death.

It apparently is par for the course for Sutter Lake to have some crime and when Kennedy is kidnapped, it challenges Cain in ways he can't comprehend.

Overall? 5 stars. I loved this one so much I have the other three in the series in my shopping cart for payday. This was my first book by Catherine Cowles and I really enjoyed it. It was everything I want in a romance novel but she isn't going over the top or trying to hard. I absolutely loved it, stayed up far too late reading it, and would recommend it to you. Though this is book four in the Sutter Lake series, they are all completely stand alone so you won't feel out of place but if you've read the other three, the other characters are in here too so it is a nice "what are they doing now" book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
   
Thank you to Social Butterfly PR and Catherine Cowles for having me on this tour- I am so lucky to review books because I find authors and books I otherwise may never have found. All thoughts are my own of course, and this post contains affiliate links. 

No comments: