Review: The Broken Destiny - Carlyle Labuschagne

The Broken Destiny by Carlyle Labuschagne

Rating {★☆☆☆☆}

Normally, I am not a quitter; I hate failing at anything. I especially dislike leaving books unfinished. Heck, I even read all THREE of the Fifty Shades series just because I hate leaving things unfinished. But this book.... This book is the very first on my DNF shelf. I didn't even have a DNF shelf before this book.

The problemOne of the many problems with this book was that it is so confused. So many things about this book are both confused and confusing. This book does know whether it wants to be a chick-lit, a trashy romance novel or a dystopian fantasy and the mashup is just not a good one.

The narrative is completely unfocused and choppy and most annoyingly - contradictory.

“Who’s there?” I inquired. “What are you doing here?” My knees trembled.
“Eating grapes,” the silky male voice said in what felt like an eternal moment, and slicing right through the comfort of silence.

How could the silence be comfortable when there's a stranger there and you don't know where he is, who he is and why he is in your apartment? There is absolutely nothing comfortable about that.

“Hey, I never noticed the color of your eyes before,” she said.
“Oh, they have a mind of their own,” I said bashfully, averting my eyes to the ground. Not many people knew about my eyes, only Sam, and she had promised never to tell anyone. I guess it was yet another reason why I distanced myself from others.
“I thought you had blue eyes,” she said softly.

If she had never noticed the colour of Ava's eyes before, how could she have possibly thought they were blue?

He stopped just shy of the light; his slight figure leaning against the edge of the wall that led up to our room . . . From his outline, I could make out that he had broad shoulders and an athletic build

So was he slight? Or athletic?

Irritably I looked around in an attempt to find Sam. At social events she always made her way through the crowd. Usually, I didn’t mind, but I felt more alone than ever and Sam knew that.

And then a few minutes later in the very same scene after being introduced to one new character . . .

I found myself alone at last

Oooookay.

EVERYTHING is overly dramatic from the characters reactions to the overly descriptive narrative.

The rider let the bike’s engine idle for a bit, his hand toggling the throttle. He was teasing us with the roar of the engine. I could now, unmistakably, feel his intense gaze on me as we moved closer. The pressure of his gaze left me quivering inside. I felt that familiar storm rise up inside of me, causing me to feel all kinds of a beautiful chaos that needed an escape.

The dialogue is stiff and awkward.

“Idiots!” Maya joked.
“Tell me about it,” added Sam, as we walked away.
“Food?” Maya asked as we headed through the gates, leaving the boys to stare after us.
“Hungry,” Sam growled, pointing to her stomach.

Honestly, half the time I felt like I was reading a terribly cheesy trashy romance novel - and not in a good way! This was no page-turning, sex-filled naughty romance read. Instead the pages are overflowing with cringe-worthy moments, eye-rolling instalust/instalove and unbelievable character reactions.

I wondered if that boy in my apartment was responsible for the awakening inside of me? I wondered if that is what love did to a person – created something so deep and intense it couldn’t stay hidden. Not that I was in love or anything that would just be insane.

Yes, yes it would be insane. And yet, after one brief conversation and a couple more sightings of this guy with minimal interaction - there it was... Instalove.

I think this is a situation where the author had a fairly clear and well developed picture in her head, and this just does not translate well on to paper. For the first twenty percent of this book the reader really has no idea what is happening until we get an info dump, and even then things are still hugely confusing.

I found nothing remotely likeable about the main character or in fact any of the characters. I just had no connection to the story and no-one to root for. The actual plot may have been a good one but I couldn't muddle it out enough to know what was happening. The best thing about this book? The truly lovely cover.

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