In every Ella James book I’ve read, she takes the reader on a heartbreaking, emotional roller coaster ride, tearing them up and then putting them back together again by the end of the book. And Fractured Love is no different. It’s an angst-filled story that spans more than a decade, starting when Evie and Landon fall in love as teenagers when he is being fostered by her family, and picking up again 10 years later when they are both residents at the same hospital. A twist of fate? Coincidence? Serendipity? Or because of some minor stalking?

After a damn good prologue from Landon’s POV, Part 1 delves into Landon and Evie’s teenage years, where a fragile friendship first develops between the moody, sullen boy and the peppy young girl. With her magical words, James *shows* the reader how Evie and Landon fall in love (rather than telling the reader so), allowing the reader to go along with the young lovebirds as they steal kisses behind the closed door of his basement bedroom, or in the car wash on the way to high school.

I did feel that her parents’ reaction was slightly harsh, considering how open and liberal they were otherwise described as being. But I get that such a reaction was necessary for the chain of events that will rip Evie and Landon apart.

Part 2 picks up a decade later, when they are both med students doing their residency at the same hospital. So much has happened in both of their lives; they are essentially strangers, but the connection between them still is so strong, so familiar. But in a sense, them dating is still forbidden as part of their hospital intern program, and the couple trade in their teenage kisses at the car wash for hot, hidden sex in a stretcher store room!

And as always, James provides a shocking plot twist that breaks the couple apart, leaves the reader gasping and wanting to keep turning the page to find out what happens next. The twist in FL is a doozy, and when Evie’s world implodes, she struggles to put the pieces back together. But once she does, and Evie and Landon figure out how to live with the complications in their lives, their fractured love is healed, made whole.

My only complaint about FL is that I would have liked to have learned more about what happened to Landon after he was kicked out by Evie’s parents. There are things that are alluded to that definitely contributed to the man he became, and that was really the one part of the book where I felt there could have been more told of the backstory.

I received an advanced copy and voluntarily left a review.