Coming Undone by Lauren Dane

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Description: Brody Brown has always been responsible for others. After his parents’ death, he gave up a promising artistic career to care for his younger brother and sister. Now, with his siblings grown, Brody owns his own business, has a nice house, makes a nice living, and for the first time in years he’s on his own.

Elise Sorenson has come to Seattle with her young daughter to find peace. After years as a world-famous ballerina—(and just as many years in a marriage-gone-bad)—she’s looking for neither love nor attention. But she finds both in the handsome, honest man who befriends her with no strings attached.

More than friends, Brody and Elise discover in each other what they need—wild, physical passion without commitment. But it’ll take a shadow from Elise’s past to make them look beyond what they need—to what they truly desire.

Finn’s Review: First, I will start this review with a slight warning to anyone wishing to read this book. It is an erotic romance (which I was well aware of going into the book as I read my fair share of erotic romances). The contemporary language and hotter-than-most-romance-novels-sex may be offensive to some, I find it’s more ‘real-life’ and enjoy that fact. Now, on with the review.

I’d never heard of Lauren Dane until August of last year, when another author recommended Laid Bare. Since I was looking for a rather hefty book to take on an upcoming vacation, I picked it up. I enjoyed that book immensely, but this review isn’t about that book. ;) I wanted to love Coming Undone just as much as I did Laid Bare, but I didn’t, but it’s only by a few hairs. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the process of watching Elise and Brody slowly falling for each other, however, instead of getting the ‘meat’ of their relationship, I feel as if it was glossed over a little. Coming Undone was noticeably shorter than it’s predecessor and I very much would have liked to see more of their relationship come together.

The biggest thing I noticed was the significant lack of conflict between the characters. Sure, there were the inevitable fights that occur in any book with a heavy romance storyline, but they seemed to be easily resolved withing a few paragraphs of conversation were there really didn’t seem to be any heat. You were given the sense the characters are mad at each other, but I just didn’t ‘feel’ it as much I would have liked to. The heat and passion seemed to be reserved more for the sex scenes instead of where emotions were riding high. To me, especially in an erotic romance, the emotions should be just as powerful as the sex.

There was a part where the story broke away from Brody and Elise and gave the reader a glimpse back at the characters from Laid Bare (Erin, Brody’s sister). While I enjoyed seeing where she stood with her loves (yes, that’s plural) the sex scene took away from the storyline building with Brody and Elise.

Elise is a very strong female character who has fought her way back after a terrible tragedy and more books – in any genre – would benefit from those types of characters. Erin, in the previous book, is just as strong and that is what draws me to these books. It’s hard to find strong female characters today that we can identify with. While I’ve never been through anything like these two women have, they are the type of women I love to read stories about – again – in any genre.

Now, all of that being said it may make it sound like I didn’t enjoy that book and that’s incorrect. I enjoyed it enough to give it 4 stars as the few things I talked about above weren’t enough to detract from the book as a whole and from Lauren’s writing style – which I also enjoy. I look forward to the next book in the Brown Sibling series, due later this year, Inside Out.

This review is based on a copy I purchased myself.

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