Review: Break Your Heart by Rhonda Helms
Break Your Heart
240 Pages
Release Date: 07/28/2015
Publisher: Kensington Books | Genre: New Adult | Romance
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Love doesn’t always add up…
Fearless and flirtatious, Megan Porter isn’t your typical math major. On the fast track to graduating with honors, a spot in her school’s masters program is nearly guaranteed. But her senior year is quickly turned upside-down by her new thesis advisor, cryptography professor Dr. Nick Muramoto. Young, effortlessly good-looking, and intellectual, he’s far more intriguing than the immature jocks Megan usually goes for. And as she decodes the hidden messages he leaves in the margins of her assignments and in their emails, she realizes this might be more than a schoolgirl crush–especially after they share a passionate kiss…
Soon Nick and Megan grow closer, and their different worlds begin to merge. But if their relationship is discovered, Nick’s career could be over. With Megan’s parents close to campus on business, hiding their love becomes an even greater challenge. Yet keeping secrets will lead Megan to discover hers is just one piece in a much larger puzzle–next to her mother’s stash of painkillers–that may put her carefully laid plans for the future in jeopardy.
*ARC provided by Publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review *
First Impression: Well-written, the character of Megan pulled me right into the story and I loved getting to know her and seeing the college world through her eyes.
I’ve not had the pleasure of reading anything by Rhonda Helms before so I had no preconceived notions in reading Break Your Heart, but I have to say, I fell in love with this book and its characters. The writing was easy and interesting to read, the story and situations were engaging and realistic to the time and setting and the characters involved, and the heroine, Megan, is easy to like and relate to, whether that be her inner feelings about Nick, her life at college, or the experiences she’s gone through in the past and going through now in the present.
In this book, we’ve got a professor/student theme going on and I have to admit, I do love reading books featuring this particular theme. It’s that whole forbidden love aspect thing I think, which is another one of my all time favorite themes to read because of the conflict and struggle the characters go through during the story. That same conflict and struggle was present in this book, and it was there the moment college senior Megan Porter meets Professor Nick Muramoto, who has taken over teaching her cryptology class and who also happens to be her newly assigned thesis advisor.
From the start, there was a sense of inevitability to Megan and Nick’s meeting, and I loved the author’s writing and storytelling ability so much, I was actually anxious for Megan and Nick to make that first step toward crossing the line. There was such good emotional buildup to that moment, and Megan is one of those characters you can’t help but like and want to root for, even as you know she’s headed for a hard, fast fall.
One thing I absolutely loved and adored about Megan is how observant she is of the people around her, her friends most of all. She sees them, in ways other people around them may not get, and that makes her a special kind of person to me. It also makes it more troubling to realize that while she can see other people and their lives, she might not see her own life and her own choices all that clear, and she has a habit of judging things or analyzing things without knowing the truth of them. All those differences in her character fascinated me, and made her interactions with Nick all the more nerve wracking and intense.
I liked these characters together. I liked how they got to know one another, despite them both knowing nothing should occur between them. This was a fantastic story. One I highly recommend reading, especially if, like me, you love New Adult romance and crave stories of forbidden love and unquenchable longing.
And if you want to read the connected book, Scratch, you can buy it at Amazon now for $1.99 or add it on Goodreads.
Rhonda Helms started writing several years ago. She has a Master’s degree in English and a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing. She also edits for Carina Press (an imprint of Harlequin Publishing) and freelance edits.
When she isn’t writing, she likes to do amateur photography, dig her toes into the sand, read for hours at a time, and eat scads of cheese. WAY too much cheese.
Rhonda lives in Northeast Ohio with her family.
This so sounds like my kid of read! Wonderful review. I think I’m going to have to read this one.
Thanks! This was such a fantastic read. I loved every single word of it. I am for sure going to go through her book backlist.