Rating: 3 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novella
Office work is hardly thrilling, but at least his company is good. Or so Jason Simpson thinks. He’s been interested in Sean Vargas for quite some time, but the man is quiet and tends to keep to himself. Yet when they end up working together, Jason decides to take the risk and ask Sean out. He’s delightfully surprised when the man says yes.
Sean had a relationship go bad in the past so his decision to have dinner with Jason isn’t made lightly. There was a time when Sean was easy going and carefree, but now he’s gun-shy and afraid of being hurt again. But Jason proves to be kind and sweet and sexy and everything Sean is looking for. Now he just has to convince himself that Jason is real and won’t bolt when things get rough.
Fragile Heart is a short and straightforward novella about two men finding their way towards love. Unfortunately, the plot is slow moving and the conversations between the main characters read as rather stifled and forced.
Jason and Sean aren’t quite caricatures, as they do have a measure of definition to them. But I didn’t feel as though I actually knew either of them. They just didn’t jump off as the page and neither of them read as particularly memorable. I wanted to like them and ended up not particularly caring about either. They just sort of exist on the page and even their struggles end up reading as blah.
The story is a bit bland and the office setting doesn’t do it any benefit. Some readers may enjoy the idea of an office romance, but given that I actually work in one, I find that particular environment rarely works as a setup for me. The idea of falling in love while trapped in a cubicle has always seem implausible to me. The plot to Fragile Heart is all rather ordinary and I was fine with that, but the conversations between the characters read as stiff and rather formulaic. I didn’t feel emotionally invested in their journey and a lot of that came down to the wooden conversation pieces between Sean and Jason. These interactions didn’t read as particularly believable and tended to take me right out of what was happening on page.
Fragile Heart isn’t terrible, but it wasn’t particularly memorable either. I wanted more from Jason and Sean and their overall relationship. It was hard to really connect with either of the main characters and I found myself hoping for something more than bland set pieces and a couple that didn’t wow. Others might find Fragile Heart enjoyable, but it just didn’t work for me.
