Broken Beautiful Hearts by Kami Garcia
Publisher: Imprint Make Your Mark
Publication Date: February 6th, 2018
Rating: 4 Stars
Source: Publisher
Format: Audiobook
Pages: 416
Summary (from Goodreads):
Before, Peyton was a star soccer player with the perfect boyfriend, Reed. Now, she has a torn knee ligament, a scholarship on the line, and a shattered sense of self. No one believes Reed pushed her, causing her injury, and Peyton just wants to leave the trauma behind. Living with her uncle and twin cousins in their small, football-obsessed town seems like a great escape plan.
There, Peyton meets Owen—high school classmate and local MMA fighter. Though Owen is charming and gentle, Peyton is determined to repress her growing attraction. But when her old and new life collide, Peyton must reclaim the truth of her past in order to save her future.
**I received this audiobook from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.**
Broken Beautiful Hearts was my first Kami Garcia book and also a book that I probably wouldn't have picked out for myself if I weren't offered the audiobook for review. It DOES fall under the tough-issue contemporary category that I do find myself enjoying, but it also deals a lot with sports, which isn't something that I know or care a lot about.
I am glad that I read this book! I really enjoyed it! The very beginning was a bit iffy for me, but when I got into it, I really liked it.
This book is about Peyton, who is a star soccer player for her DC high school and just got a soccer scholarship to a good college. Things are going great for her until she finds out that her boyfriend is abusing steroids and when she confronts him about it, he pushes her down a flight of stairs, causing her to tear a ligament in her knee and jeopardizes her soccer career and scholarship.
No one believes her when she tells them what Reed did to her and Reed won't leave her alone so her mom sends her to Tennessee to live with her uncle and twin cousins. There she plans to rehab her knee and heal so that she can play soccer again in the spring.
It took me a minute to really like Peyton. I can't really put my finger on what it was that bothered me about her, but in the end, I did grow to like her. She has gone through a lot. She recently lost her father. She lost her best friend (and basically all of her other friends) after Reed pushed her and no one believed her story. She isn't sure if she lost her shot at a soccer career.
She's really just had it rough.
Something I really appreciate about her is how she handles everything. She knows what she wants in life and what she deserves in a relationship and she doesn't seem to be afraid to make tough choices. She doesn't waver in her story about what happened to her knee, even though she loses all of her friends and starts to get threatening phone calls over it.
Truly, I don't understand why no one believes her. She's not made out to be a liar in this book or anything. I feel like there's only one person who has any real reason to not want to believe her and that's Reed's sister, Tess. But Tess is also her best friend so I guess I still don't understand why Tess won't even entertain the idea that Peyton is telling the truth.
I also like how after her ordeal with Reed, she just immediately drops his sorry butt. There's no pining after him. There's no missing him or wanting to get back with him. There's not a single regret about telling the truth about what he did to her. I don't know, I just really appreciated that about Peyton.
I really liked the romance in this book. Owen is an MMA fighter like Reed, so Peyton immediately marks him as Not An Option, but her heart has other ideas. I really liked Owen. He seemed really sweet and kind and I loved him and Peyton together.
There are only a couple things that I can think of that I didn't care for about this book. For one, when Peyton is first introduced to the "mean girl" of the story, she takes every opportunity she gets to call her a bitch. Like, yeah, when they first meet, April is picking on one of her fellow cheerleaders, but Peyton just comes out with guns blazing every time April comes into the story. It doesn't seem like there's any real reason for it because April isn't even a relevant character in the story, she's literally just there for Peyton to hate and it seemed unnecessary.
The other thing I thought was weird about this book was the way Peyton's twin cousins, Christian and Cameron, treated her. They're ridiculously over protective of her. Going so far as to tell all the guys at her new school that she doesn't date and being super nosy in her love life.
Besides that, I really liked Christian and Cameron. They were hilarious and were always there for Peyton.
Overall, I really liked this book. I feel like I personally might not have liked it as much if I were reading it instead of listening to it, but I did really enjoy listening to it. If you like books about sports (I feel like that's a thing I've seen people asking for on Twitter), you might like this book. I feel like soccer should be the main sport, but MMA fighting is probably the most prominent sport featured.
Have you read Broken Beautiful Hearts yet? Or are you looking forward to it?
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