"Powerful & bittersweet, Starstruck’s narrative yields genuine depth..."

• ASIN: ‎ B0C6HCZG7Y
• Publisher: ‎ Barn Owl Books (15 Jun. 2023)
• Language: ‎ English
• Print length: ‎ 303 pages
• Genre: Love Triangle Romance Books

The BookViral Review:

Powerful and bittersweet, Breaking Fancy: Starstruck’s energetic narrative yields genuine depth whilst being a fine example of close observation and telling details.

It is easy to analyze the mechanism of a good story but more often than not more difficult to explain why a select few are as moving as they are. Yet with Breaking Fancy: Starstruck, it’s not only the manner through which the characters are revealed to us but Dee’s tender exploration of Lexi’s abusive past and how the truths we tell ourselves come to impact the lives of those closest to us.

Instantly compelling and sometimes heart-breaking, sexual abuse isn’t an easy theme to include in romantic fiction but Dee’s willingness to steer away from a prescriptive approach means she reaches her readers on an emotive level. Yet Breaking Fancy: Starstruck is not about grand, tormented revelations. Instead, it’s an accretion of little moments, invariably deep, occasionally funny, sometimes a little sad, but always embedded in the reality of Dee’s sharply drawn, idiosyncratic characters.

Romantic fiction is a genre in which intelligence is woefully undervalued, but it is this quality — even more than Dee’s narrative finesse — that distinguishes “Breaking Fancy: Starstruck” from its peers. Dee has a highly distinctive literary voice whilst her writing style is simple and spare. Her ear for dialogue is always spot on and it’s here she primarily succeeds in bringing Lexi’s story to life.

This is underpinned by the three-dimensionality of Dee’s characters who pull us in like a magnetic field. Lexi schemes, weeps, and endures and Dee is cuttingly precise in her observations as Lexi pursues her goal but Breaking Fancy: Starstruck wouldn’t be as good as it is without its superb cast of eclectic supporting characters. Kai, Maddie, Stanley and Marcus. Each one gives a constantly shifting tone to Dee’s narrative tone and in her ability to project their emotions, she makes them feel overwhelmingly real.

If you stop to reflect on Lexi’s story you will find lessons aplenty on every page about feminism, ambition, self-sacrifice and love but what radiates above all from Lexi’s story, is a sense that we are capable of great things when we refuse to let the past define us.

An unforgettable and powerfully poignant five-star read Breaking Fancy: Starstruck is an unreservedly recommended Golden Quill read!