Title: A Little Too Broken
Author: Brad Vance
Genre: Contemporary Romance (PTSD, HIV couple)
Length: Novel (129 pages)
Publisher: Brad Vance (August 18th 2013)
Heat Level: Mild
Heart Rating: ♥♥♥3Hearts
Blurb: When Jamie walks through the door of the Humane Society, it’s not just an animal who needs rescuing that day. Tom is there to adopt another service dog into the Canine Comrade Corps, but its Jamie his heart goes out to. But each man turns away, walks away, from the potential pain, the rejection, the knowledge that it’ll all end in tears…
Jamie knows damn well that the HIV he contracted from an unfaithful lover has put him out of the dating game forever in the small town of Santa Vera. Tom lost his legs in Afghanistan, and got new ones, yeah, but with a side order of PTSD to go, he thought grimly. The real problem is that only now does he realize he’s gay, now that the revelation would be just one too many things to put his family through, after everything else they’ve had to deal with.
So both men grin and bear the loneliness, put their feelings on a shelf, even as Jamie’s volunteer stint at CCC turns into friendship and, despite their resolve, something more…
Product Link: http://www.amazon.com/A-Little-Too-Broken-ebook/dp/B00EN2M37O/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378680513&sr=1-1
Reviewer: Tams
Review: This is the story of two completely different men who never would have met under normal circumstances.
Tom is a war veteran who lost both legs serving his country in Afghanistan. He suffers from PTSD and he works as a trainer of service dogs. The dogs you see that visit soldiers in the hospital after they return home from war broken and battered. It’s through his job he meets Jamie when he comes to adopt a kitten, but changes his mind. Jamie is enamored with Tom from the moment he sets eyes on him, so he volunteers for Tom’s cause to be closer to him.
Jamie is young and bitter. He is HIV positive, infected by an ex that was selfish and didn’t use protection or disclose his disease with Jamie prior to consummating the relationship. Guys like him should be brought before the firing squad! But, I digress. Jamie falls completely in love with Tom while working with him and getting to know him better. The fact that he doesn’t have real legs never really registers on Jamie’s radar. He just sees the man who Tom is. When two men that are a little too broken are brought together, great things can happen. Like truly loving each other, as you already know what it’s like to be different, to live with the self-doubt and insecurity coupled with your disease or disability.
The book is a little slow in parts, but it came together nicely by the end. There was also an aspect to the sex in this book that bordered a dark side. Vance had some undertones of this perhaps being or becoming a dominant/submissive relationship and that’s not generally an aspect of M/M novels that I enjoy. That being said, neither Tom nor Jamie was ever disrespectful to each other, so that balanced it out for me. If you’re looking for something on the shorter side, that’s a little dirty, but still has a good base story, then give this one a peek.