Breaking a Legend by Sarah Robinson

Put a picture like that on the front cover, tell me there is a troubled but glorious MMA fighter nestled between the pages and I will tell you to move on over because this one is mine!!

Rory Kavanagh is the first of his family to get a book and if this one is only the start then I am hands down sunk, I loved this – the story was everything I could have possibly hoped it could and would be and the characters had so much going on that if anything the book was a little too short for me. The conclusion to sort of wrapped up a little too quickly.

If I had to define Alpha in the dictionary, I would be running out of space with pictures of all my favourite book alpha plastered all over the pages, but I would have to find a little bit more room now because Rory Kavanagh is not just a teensy bit alpha, this man is alpha to the core!!!

And he has no intension of changing. But will he have a choice?

Clare is new in town and is very obviously on the run from something or more likely someone but exactly who and why is not made clear until well into the book, giving time to get to know her for who she is now. I liked this, I kept in my mind that there was more to her story but by not knowing, I was not tainting her with an element of sympathy – I could just accept her for who she was.

Rory suffered a life altering injury during his last bout and is still on the road to full recovery, one that he is not helping by self-medication on not only too much alcohol but also with prescription painkillers that not exactly garnered by legal means.

Sleeping his way around the neighbourhood, Rory is a walking time bomb – something has got to give and it is just a case of how cataclysmic the outcome is going to be.

Clare is working at a local bar when a very drunk Rory first claps eyes on her and even in his drunken condition, he is smitten.

Unable to shake her from his mind, he knows that she is too important to let go, so he doesn’t!

He goes all out to get the woman that has his full attention, but will he have to try too hard or is the feeling mutual?

Their journey is fairly easy, they take tiny steps at first, Rory meeting her after work to walk her home, offering to train her in self-defence and Clare urging him to give up the wallowing and the booze and fight to be the man that he should be not what he is now.

With her by his side, Rory feels invincible, but what happens when her past threatens to take away everything they have, will this headstrong man be able to see straight and protect his woman?

When Clare’s past tracks her down the resulting fracas is nail-biting but it gives a credibility to Clare’s strength.

The story is really rather sweet in away, a man that doesn’t do love, falling hard and fast for the one thing he has never had, someone of his own, someone that he can love and that loves him back. He was everything I would have ever wanted him to be had I written him myself.

The Kavanagh family have a lot to give, they are boisterous, loyal and loving, they have the archetypical patriarch, one who everyone in the district looks up to and who commands respect. They have a mother that rules them with an iron rod but whole loves them with all her heart, no matter the trouble they get themselves into.

They are close but completely different and I am so looking forward to reading the stories that are to come from the rest of the eclectic, gregarious family.