Bent not Broken by Julia Goda

When you build a wall so strong around your heart it's going to take someone pretty special to break it down.....

Ivey had moved to the small town of Cedar Creek to leave behind a life that she thought had broken her. 

An abusive father, a suicidal mother and the man she considered the love of her life.

What happened to her was enough to break the hardest of people but 9 years later she had a lovely house and a little bookshop, friends who were special to her but she also had to live with the nightmares that she tried so hard to bury.

Ivey has decided never to love again, instead settling for friends with benefits to satisfy her needs. 

When one of these fwb decides he wants more, it's too much for her and she tells him the arrangement is off.

What she never considered was that one day, a man she has seen around for years would come into her shop to pick up his son and change her life for good.

Cal lived with his son Tommy. There was no mother, she abandoned them both when Tommy was a baby. He had lived the last few years much the same as Ivey. A few hook ups here and there, no one special. 

For years though he had been wanting one woman but held off, why he didn't make his move sooner was something he regretted now. 

As soon as he decided Ivey was the one she didn't really have a choice in the matter, he wasn't going to let her say no. Little did he know that the walls he had to break down would be some of the most painful he had ever encountered.

When she finally gives in to his persistence she realises he is not like the men in her past, he will do anything to love and protect her from whatever he needs to. 

When ghosts from her past threaten to turn her back into the frightened woman she once was, this is exactly what he has to do.

Cal and Tommy love her and want her to be part of their family and nothing is going to stand in their way.

This was a really beautiful book about being loved and cherished the way every woman should be.....

4.5 out of 5

Reviewed by Sue


Books Laid Bare