Review: Nearly Broken (Nearly #1) by Devon Ashley

We’d both gone missing at one point, but Claire had one thing I didn’t. Someone to notice. So why was I the one still here and she the one still gone?

Nineteen year old Megan Smith has spent the past year working in a small town diner in the middle of nowhere. Life is quiet, simple, safe. Then comes the news that her look-a-like has gone missing.

Claire.

Still damaged both physically and mentally, Megan's not looking to be noticed. Wherever she goes from here, it's a road she needs to take alone. But when Nickolas Ellis takes the job as the new nightshift cook, it scares her how easily her defenses crumble down, down, down for him. But there are secrets she can't bear to share with just anyone, unspeakable acts that continue to haunt, and when the similarities of Claire’s abduction couples with the fear of an unwanted visitor in town, the urge to run before it all happens again intensifies, threatening the only happiness Megan's ever found.

This was really a difficult book to read. It has some pretty dark themes going on here, it's violent and it's quite graphic, sexually speaking. That's not anything bad, but it is something that the average reader should be aware of. But it made the book good. It made you keep reading because you just had to know what was going to happen. 

That being said, I did have a bit of a hard time connecting with Megan. Her character was standoffish and it really read that way. Now, this could be totally intentional by the author. Maybe she wanted the reader to feel disconnected, dejected, alone and helpless. If it was intentional, she did a great job of it ... if it wasn't intended ... then it turned into an amazing coincidence. About a quarter of the way through the book, I really started to view things like Megan and I think that a big part of that was kind of not connecting with her in the beginning. 

I loved seeing the back and forth between Megan an Nickolas. It was fun and sweet and completely unsuspecting. But let me just tell you, their shared sorrow will eat away at the center of your being. Their relationship is definitely something to experience.

To be completely honest, I know that this is the first book in a series ... I don't know if I can read the next one. This first one just ripped me apart. I think if I step away from it for a few months, I'll be able to pick up the next installment of their relationship but at this point, I'm going to have to let myself decompress a little bit.

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