Broke Deep (Porthkennack, #3)by Charlie Cochrane
Published by Riptide Publishing
eARC (received via NetGalley)
Adult, LGBT, contemporary, romance
Morgan Capell’s life is falling apart by small degrees—his father’s dead, his boyfriend dumped him, and his mother’s in the grip of dementia. His state of mind isn’t helped by his all-too-real recurring nightmare of the wreck of the Troilus, a two hundred year old ship he’s been dreaming about since his teenage years.
The story of the Troilus is interwoven with the Capell family history. When amateur historian Dominic Watson inveigles himself into seeing the ship’s timbers which make up part of Morgan’s home, they form a tentative but prickly friendship that keeps threatening to spark into something more romantic.
Unexpectedly, Dominic discovers that one of the Troilus’s midshipman was rescued but subsequently might have been murdered, and persuades Morgan to help him establish the truth. But the more they dig, the more vivid Morgan’s nightmares become, until he’s convinced he’s showing the first signs of dementia. It takes as much patience as Dominic possesses—and a fortuitous discovery in a loft—to bring light out of the darkness.
I loved the first two installments in the Porthkennack series, and I had high hopes for Broke Deep, especially since the premise sounded so fascinating - I'm a history student so the aspect of researching local and family history and shipwrecks was really something I looked forward to read about. However, Broke Deep didn't meet my expectations and I had hard time connecting with the characters, and overall I was quite disappointed with the story.
To me, the story and its characters felt quite one dimensional as there wasn't much to hold onto or to identify with. The beginning of the book was promising: there was some strong feelings as Morgan had just been dumped by his insensitive ex-boyfriend while he was still dealing with his mother's early dementia, and Dominic seemed really enthusiastic about the research of the shipwreck. However, from then on it was a downhill for me, because the ship and plot surrounding it got lost among the all the long heart to heart talks. And despite all those long conversations between Morgan and Dominic, the reader don't learn anything new about the characters, their past and aspirations beyond what the first chapters told. For example, Dominic's career choice was mentioned once and there wasn't really anything about his family or living situation, other than he was mainly living in London. All of that made the characters bland and they just lacked any personalities. Most prominent characteristic that Morgan had was that he was really selfish most of the time, and Dominic was way too forgiving. I just couldn't connect with either of the characters and it all just felt so bland, especially since even the romance lacked a lot of any sort of heat.
Broke Deep just didn't seem to go anywhere, and all the major things were left unsolved: the budding relationship, the shipwreck, Morgan's fears of dementia. There were also plenty of telling but not really showing how the characters felt. The story had a lot of potential because the premise was very interesting and even the beginning of the story had potential to be as good as the previous books in the series. In the end it just didn't work for me because by the end I just didn't care about the characters or the plot.
If you're into long heart to heart conversations and romance that's slow burn and doesn't really have any steamy scenes and you find the premise interesting, then Broke Deep might be for you. I just didn't click with the story. However, I can wholeheartedly recommend the two previous books (Wake Up Call and A Gathering Storm) in Porthkennack series.
2 of 5 stars
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Thank you, Riptide Publishing, for giving me a chance to read and review Broke Deep!
(A copy of this ebook was provided in return for an honest review.)
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