Review: The Holiday Heartbreaker

The Holiday Heartbreaker by Maisey Yates
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

She’d been Carter’s girlfriend, Carter’s wife, Carter’s ex-wife. Who was she when he didn’t define her? Maybe she deserved to find out. 

The Holiday Heartbreaker is book five in the Four Corners Ranch series but you could start here, like I did. There's obvious characters from past books, the Ranch is shared between four families and the series looks to, mainly, follow a group of brothers that own a portion. They've started a new venture with equine therapy and our heroine, Elizabeth, comes into the picture as the newly hired therapist. 

He had been the favorite child of the devil. He was thirty-four years old and he still hadn’t figured out what the hell to do with that. 

Elizabeth has been divorced for six years because her childhood sweetheart ended up cheating on her, but the story doesn't exactly vilify him as Elizabeth works through the pain of the divorce and acknowledges that they married too young, grew apart, and the ex, kind of, still wants to be a part of their eight year son, Benny's life. It's mostly believable, I'm not sure I'd go as far as Elizabeth delivering a smiling hello to the ex's new wife, the one he cheated on Elizabeth with, to keep the peace but I don't have to be a “perfect” heroine in a romance. There's some friction with the ex as Elizabeth finally decides to do something for herself and take the equine therapist job that requires her to move three hours away, taking Benny with her. Seventy percent of this (not a scientific number) is Elizabeth working through her issues of growing up in the foster care system and how her divorce went down. 

He shifted slightly, and rested his hand on the wall just above her head, leaning in. 

The other thirty percent is divided up between our hero Brody's issues and the insta-lust/love relationship with Elizabeth. Brody's dad was awful and was physically abusive to his brothers, except he treated Brody like he actually loved him. This has caused it's own trauma to Brody as he craved his father's love but doesn't know how to gel that with how abusive (we're talking setting one brother on fire to murder him) the dad was to his brothers. Brody has tried to deal with the trauma by not getting close to anyone and hitting the bars for one night stands for companionship. The first half dealt more with Elizabeth but the second half brings in Brody's issues more. 

She wanted to do something wild. She wanted to do something that made her happy now. She wanted to do something that felt good now. 

Since our two leads are spending so much time with their personal issues, the story spends a lot of time in their heads, not my favorite. If you personally have or had these issues the characters did, I can see this story hitting you harder than me. These two do start hitting the sheets a little bit before the midway point and get more than one open door scene, I can't say I felt the emotional depth between them. So much time is spent in their heads trying to work out their issues, the romance development got mostly left out and it read more like lust attraction. 

Because he had never seen anything more beautiful in all of his life, and he had never wanted anything like he wanted Elizabeth Colfax right now. 

There was a tiny little bit showing Elizabeth's job as an equine therapist but even less of Brody's ranch life and while Christmas happens in the book, there really wasn't much for seasonal vibes. The first half dealt a lot with Elizabeth's issues and I thought I would end up calling this women's fiction but Brody's issues do get showcased enough that I backed off that. However, the romance, relationship development, was pretty lacking, enough that I want to shy away from even recommending this as romance genre. I want to invent a new genre called, therapy fiction because that was what this was mostly focused on, the characters' personal issues. Like I said though, if you share anything with the characters, their emotional working through would probably hit you different and if you have been a reader of the series, you'd probably enjoy seeing one of the last brothers to fall in love. The epilogue was a condensed HEA giving the reader a look at the main couple's future.

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