Genre: Contemporary, Prison
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Tony
Get It On Amazon
About The Book
Some loves rewrite your sentence.
Samuel has spent years building walls. Not the prison’s concrete ones, but the kind that keep lives from bleeding into each other. The inmates call him The Ice Queen—a title he wears like armor. After a lifetime of being preyed upon, he knows better than to let anyone close.
Then Eli arrives like sunlight through bulletproof glass.
A wrongfully convicted pediatrician. Gentle. Kind. Everything Samuel’s learned to avoid. But when Samuel steps in to protect him, it’s supposed to be a one-time act of mercy.
Eli’s husband has another plan.
Nathaniel—who looks at Samuel like he’s something more than a convict—makes a request that changes everything: Be his prison husband. Love him where I can’t.
Samuel agrees. He’s good at pretending. But the more he plays the role, the harder it is to stay cold. Eli’s warmth seeps in. Nathaniel’s quiet steadiness cuts deep. And the whispered trust of Eli’s daughter is the most fragile thing Samuel’s ever held.
Now, the man who survived on silence is hoarding their love like contraband.
A dark, literary MMM romance filled with found family, prison walls, obsessive devotion, and the kind of love that breaks you open.
Perfect for fans of Captive Prince, Wolfsong, and The Foxhole Court.
If you’ve ever felt too broken to be loved—this is for you.
The Review
The Care of Broken Things is a tough read, but a wonderful one. It is all set in a prison, a tough prison, or maybe just typical.
There are three main characters, Samuel, Eli and Nathaniel. Samuel is a murderer, an understandable murderer, even if not a legally justifiable one. He is a damaged survivor, violent and uncompromising at first.
Eli is a doctor. unjustly imprisoned and Nathaniel is Eli’s husband and an important part of their outside support. There are a number of important secondary characters including Sam’s sister and Eli’s young daughter as well. Balancing them out are some real nasty bits of work.
It is a dark tale of danger lurking around every corner. Every now and then, the sun breaks through, shining on a dormant seed, which bursts into growth and pushes its way into the light. It’s a slow process, but a joyous one in the end. Joyous but difficult.
I needed to step back every so often to read something lighter before returning to it. But return I did, as I was invested in seeing it to the end, and not just because I said I would. I do not read everything to the end – some things no more than a page or two – so if I finish a book it’s because it had something going for it.
The Care of Broken Things has a lot going for it. Great characters. Suspense. Danger. Story. Strong emotions. Turmoil and peace. Pain and love. Dark and light. Sadness and joy. Hurt and healing. In the end, some kind of justice is served, not necessarily by legal means, but justice all the same.
Now I’ve just got to steel myself for the extended sequel, Boyfriend On Parole, which I’ve just picked up, as in paid money for. 🙂
The Reviewer
Tony is an Englishman living amongst the Welsh and the Other Folk in the mountains of Wales. He lives with his partner of thirty-six years, four dogs, two ponies, various birds, and his bees. He is a retired lecturer and a writer of no renown but that doesn’t stop him enjoying what he used to think of as ‘sensible’ fantasy and sf. He’s surprised to find that if the story is well written and has likeable characters undergoing the trails of life, i.e. falling in love, falling out of love, having a bit of nooky (but not all the time), fending off foes, aliens and monsters, etc., he’ll be happy as a sandperson who has just offloaded a wagon of sand at the going market price. As long as there’s a story, he’s in. He aims to write fair and honest reviews. If he finds he is not the target reader he’ll move on.
