by Elizabeth (link)
Genre cest, drama/angst, romance
Pairings Avery/Carrick, Isaac/Nikki, Taylor/Avery, Taylor/Natalie, Zac/Avery, Zac/Kate
Length 26 chapters and epilogue
Status Completed (part of the Stay series)
I have to begin this review with a big caveat. The Broken One is not a story for everyone. One look at the pairings it contains should explain why. Even for someone like myself, who is admittedly a huge cest fan, the idea of het cest is more than a bit off-putting. Still, because I like Elizabeth’s plotting and I knew she wrote The Broken One to help cope with some events in her own life (something I can relate to), I was willing to give it a read.
We find out very quickly after the story begins that Zac has killed himself, but his reasoning for doing so is something that eludes Avery. Chapters that alternate between past and present reveal their relationship and gradually reveal their big secret. It’s always a bit awkward and difficult for the narrator of a story to know something but not reveal it to the audience, but Elizabeth manages to pull it off well enough here. It still isn’t totally understandable that Zac killed himself to somehow save Avery from further trouble because of their relationship.
As for the het cest element, I’ll admit that it still is far from my favorite. The sex scenes are not incredibly pleasant for me to read, but I’ll take the Zac and Avery action over seeing Avery with either Carrick or Taylor. While it isn’t surprising that she would cling to both them, two men who Zac was very close to, at different points in her life and her rocky relationship with Zac, I don’t really care for her relationships with either of them. Even with Zac’s possessiveness and the fact that I’m a bit squicked out by Zac and Avery having a child together–oops, I revealed her big secret–I still find their relationship to be my favorite in the story.
Ultimately, if you don’t like het cest, I don’t know that The Broken One will win you over, but it does have a lot of interesting layers to it and sets the stage for a pretty complex and surprising series of stories.
Review by Bethany (website)