Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Book Review: Rule Breaker (Unbreakable #2) by Kat Bastion with Stone Bastion


Racial Tensions Flare as Hot as the Passion in RULE BREAKER,
a Modern-day Romeo and Juliet Story


Leilani Kealoha wants to be set free. Of family expectations. Of generations of prejudice.

Chafing at rules made by the proud Hawaiian men in her family, she yearns to discover herself and hungers to explore the world. Her adventuresome heart? Longs for something even greater, deeper.

The last thing she expects is an East Coast haole surfer to hold the key to everything.

Mason Price is done walking his parents’ path. Done with social acceptance—with cold politics.

On a surfing quest to reinvent himself, Mase finds an exotic beauty standing on his towel. But it’s her feisty bargaining that catches him off guard. When he challenges her with a “Truth or Shots” drinking game, she unwittingly reveals more than she’d intended about herself…and him.

The raw truth stuns him: She’s suffered like he has, is lost like he is—keeps secrets like he does.

But will young love and shared situations be enough to conquer racial and cultural divides?

Lines in the sand…were meant to be crossed. 



 


Rule Breaker is the second book in the Unbreakable series by Kat Bastion and Stone Bastion. The first book is called Heartbreaker and I read it earlier this year. I enjoyed that one and when I was asked to read this one, I couldn't have been more excited. Unfortunately, it was just not my thing this time. 

I really wanted to just fall in love with this book and I almost did at first. When I got started, I enjoyed getting to know Leilani and Mason and I thought that the heat between these two was almost palpable. Leilani is a bit spunky and that made her a fun character to get to know. Mason is devastatingly handsome (how all leading men should be, of course) and he marches to the beat of his own drummer. That's also a great quality for a character to have because you really get to see what makes them tick and that just makes for an entertaining story. These two together was awesome. I liked the chemistry between them and it's what pushed me to continue reading. 

The story line should push readers to keep going but this storyline was just not one that I connected with at all. I don't know if it was because of all of the Hawaiian words and slang that made the book difficult to read for me or what. It's not like the authors didn't explain what these words meant, they did. But the words and explanations happened so often that it felt like the story was being put on hold each time there needed to be a definition. I won't even bring up all of the times that there were words that had previously been defined and I had completely forgotten what in the world that they meant and then I had to stop and either look it up or search for it in my book again. To top it off, I found myself trying to read things phonetically because I was subconsciously reading these character's words with a Hawaiian accent. Again, it just slowed the story down to the point where it felt like you're trudging through some Louisiana marsh and your shoes keep getting filled with mud and it's becoming increasingly difficult to take a step. That sounds super harsh but the marsh thing was exactly what I made a note of as I was reading. 

In the end, after taking all of that stuff into account, I just couldn't find it in me to enjoy the story. Eventually, the characters became stale because I felt like I couldn't just read about them and their situation and instead I was trying to decipher what they were even saying. Either I'm too old to read this one or too closed minded with my books. It's probably a little of both, I guess. Don't take my word for it, read some other reviews and check this one out yourself because I did enjoy the first book and I know that these writers know their stuff. We just didn't mesh this time. So on to the next one!

* I received this novel in exchange for an honest review *



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