I haven't wanted to read these two last books in the Pretty Broken series for a while because of the trigger warnings and the angst and fucking dick-head manager Alexander (fuck him), but I'm in a dark romance era right now and a crossing books off my TBR lists era, and I'm trying to stick to it. J.R. Gray, the fabulous and the fabulously cruel (I always cry) wrote this series. The next book (the forth) is titled "Pretty F*cked."
Summary of the series: each book is about a different member of the band. Each band member has their own trauma and demons, but each gets a HEA. Or HFN, because their band manager is a twat waffle who is fucking them over, feeding their additions, and fueling nonsense inter-band drama for his own gain. They're all trying to get rid of him, but contracts and lawyers and money and trigger warnings (and a whole lot of swear words from me).
["Caspian Locke
I don’t think we even begin to understand love until we’ve lost the one we thought we’d spend the rest of our life with.
I don’t think we begin to understand ourselves until we realize that it’s most likely our fault.
And I don’t think we begin to understand life until we understand it comes in so many shades of gray.
You can be a good person and still do irrevocable harm.
Life is messy, so fucking messy.
I hate it.
Or maybe I hate myself.
I thought for a long time I hated him.
But I can’t hate Iris.
No matter how much he hurts, I still carry this little fucking wish in the depths of my soul that one day he’ll forgive me and admit he still loves me.
Part of life is living with the burden of what I’ve done and waiting for a day that will never come.
This is that life.
And we all come out Pretty F*cked."]
And the prologue already had me on edge, broken and fucked just like the rest of the band, the rest of these poor boys who only wanted to make music, magic. Instead, the fame and the power-hungry fame-mongers ruined it (almost) beyond repair. And waiting for the moment in the plot where the prologue would appear? Fuuuuuck, it was horrible. And when it did happen, I was shaking and sobbing, half ruined, even though we already read those words, even though we already knew the outcome. It was so much harder to read the second time.
Much of this was harder to read the second time. Because this book spanned 4+ years. It was Caspian and Iris falling in and out of love, falling in and out of fate, falling in and out of trust. It was reliving most of the rest of this series, from different POVs. It was trauma and PTSD from different viewpoints. It was Pretty Broken on all levels of broken.
And my favorite broken boy (Iris...duh) was the most broken of all. And still continues to be. AND there's still a whole book left in the series... Here's to more crying.
Trigger Warnings (as a series): alcohol/alcoholism, major descriptions of depression, talk of involuntary treatment, drug use, talk of suicide, suicidal ideation, assault, domestic abuse, domestic abuse isn't always physical, blackmail, lying, gaslighting, manipulation, and more
#prettyobsessed #prettytoxic #prettywreck #prettyfucked #prettyblack #prettybroken #prettybrokenseries #jrgray #books #queerbooks #queererotica #bodicerippers #bookstagram #bookphotography #ilovebooks
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