Review: Until I Break by M. Leighton

Title: Until I Break

Author: M. Leighton
Series: Book One in the Twisted Series
Published: May 14, 2013
Source: ARC Copy Provided by the Author (in exchange for an honest review)
Genre: New Adult Contemporary
My Rating: 4 Stars!

Book Description:

"I’m intrigued. Tempted beyond what I’ve ever been before. To know her, to open her up. To break her."

In love, sometimes what you fear most is exactly what you need.

Laura Drake is an author. She writes bestselling paranormal romances that continue to top the charts. She is sharp. She is confident. She is in control. 

And she doesn’t exist.

Samantha Jansen is the woman behind the wig, the woman most of the world doesn’t know exists. She is shy. She is insecure. She is nothing like her main character or her alter ego. She is scarred—deeply scarred—by a past she can’t let go of and a present she can’t make peace with.

Samantha’s dreams are consumed by one man, the broken hero from her books. Mason Strait is both her wildest fantasy and her most terrifying nightmare. 

When Samantha meets Alec Brand, a corporate consultant, it is as though Mason has come to life. Alec is handsome to a fault, as elegant as he is arrogant, and more intense than any man has a right to be.

Samantha is soon sucked into a world that mirrors the fiction she writes. Just like her main character, Daire Kirby, Samantha finds herself unable to resist the forbidden lure of Alec. And just like Daire, she also finds that she is faced with taking a chance on a man who could either set her free or destroy her.

The scale tilts toward destruction when Samantha finds out that Alec is as much a work of fiction as Mason. And he has scars of his own, scars that could ruin them both.


**This book may be read as a stand-alone, as the story of Alec and Samantha comes to a conclusion in this book**

My Thoughts and Review:

Ooo this book. This book is something else. It went way beyond my “comfort” zone but oh boy was it worth it.

Two very broken people, but in a way that I haven't read about before, finding and helping one another, all while fighting their own demons, passions and inner turmoil, well, there really is something beautiful about that. Even if that beauty is also filled with deep  seeded pasts and secrets way beyond the norm and definitely beyond the norm in this genre. To be honest, I wasn't expecting it. It took me by surprise, the content of this one. But in typical Leighton fashion, the author handled it wonderfully, honestly, with the raw and grit we have come accustomed to from her and I shouldn't have expected anything less.

Samantha and Alec, well, really, I'm not going to say anything about them, other than to understand them, to understand this story, you are just going to have to read it for yourself. I can't really explain the emotions of this story, it just isn't something I think I can do and give Leighton and the book credit they deserve.

I wasn't comfortable with a lot of the subject matter of the story, mostly because I don't practice it and I don't understand it, but Leighton made me understand why it was important to Alec and Samantha and I have to give her huge props for that, because it wasn't easy. Only a really gifted writer can do that and once again, I shouldn't have expected anything less from her, she has blown me away time and time again with her ability to get down and dirty (not pun attended) and tackle those hard to hear and sometimes hard to read matters that are so real and make her characters really stand out and become real people. 

*All Opinions are my own and I was in no way compensated for my review*