Review: Breaking Point

Sometimes even heroes need help

Making the Grade: A+

For My Thoughts


Pamela Clare couldn’t have asked for better press before the release of her latest novel Breaking Point about a former Navy SEAL. It was a marketing dream come true that the biggest news story of the decade…the death of Osama Bin Laden by the elusive Team SEAL Six occurred the day before Breaking Point released.

THIS book is why I read romantic suspense and LOVE it. I’ve read every book in Pamela Clare’s I-Team series and she has yet to disappoint. Breaking Point may just be the best one yet and that includes Naked Edge which was one of my top picks for 2010 and made me cry at the emotional and gripping end.

Two voices connect in the darkness. Two strangers each in their own version of hell in a dank, dark prison cell…knowing it’s only a matter of time. Two strangers thrust together in the most desperate and dangerous circumstances two people can find themselves in. Two strangers who are forced to trust and make hard decisions in order to survive…or die.

Natalie Benoit may be a journalist by day, but more importantly she was a survivor…of an attempted murder; of Hurricane Katrina; of the great personal loss of her fiancé and her parents as they were racing to be by her side on that fateful day of Hurricane Katrina‘s destruction six years ago. For six years she‘s been unable to move on.

But Natalie is one tough cookie - brave, courageous and gutsy in the most extreme of circumstances and she‘s smart. No wimpy or TSTL moments for this heroine. Many times during their imprisonment Zach could only marvel at Natalie’s strength and courage. He’d never met a woman as strong as Natalie….or as soft and pretty and sweet.

Zach...just feast your eyes on the cover people (yes it’s yummy Jed Hill in real life), swoon-worthy Zach “Black” McBride. Former Navy SEAL, currently employed by the US Marshall Service and presently a shackled and blindfolded “guest” of the drug cartel Los Zetas in a hell-hole beyond compare.

Zach couldn't make it in the “real” world after his honourable discharge from the military, suffering from PTSD and survivor’s guilt when his entire SEAL team was killed in Afghanistan. He needs the rush of adrenaline; the thrill of kill or be killed mentality that being a US Marshall, walking the line along the US-Mexico border can give him.

Zach. His body may be bruised and battered, his shrill cries from being tortured unlike anything Natalie has ever experienced before...but he's not broken. It's just sometimes even heroes need help.

Can I just state for the record that I hate electrical torture scenes. I always hated it when Jack Bauer from the TV show 24 was tortured with it and it’s just as bad reading about it as it was watching it on TV...at least then I could hide my eyes.

In survival mode for the first part of this story Zach and Natalie are pushed to the limit. Two strangers who have simply been existing, going through the motions of life and through their shared experience learn to live and love again.

As an added bonus in Breaking Point we were treated to cameos from all the previous I-Team men and their significant others in varying degrees. Clare writes this group of men like no other. She shows us what it means for a group of Alpha men to have a real bromance.

Memorable Quote that made me LOL. Marc to Gabe:

“You weren’t in desert combat. You were a park ranger. I’m not dissing that. It’s an important job. Someone has to keep the chipmunks in line. I’ve watched Chip and Dale. I know how sneaky those little bastards can be.”

All kidding aside you can feel and see the mutual respect, admiration and love - yes I said love that these men feel for one another. They would each take a bullet for the other one without hesitation.

There is sooooooo much goodness in this story! And the S.E.X….. Muy Caliente!

How many ways can you extol the virtues of why you love a book? Sometimes words just aren’t good enough. I was so immersed in the storytelling in Breaking Point that I thought I was right there along side the characters. Seriously the action does not let up from start to finish. I love it when I read a book and the author keeps you right on the edge, a tingle of apprehension skating down your spine, waiting for what she’s planning next for the characters good and bad.

If I were a movie producer - Breaking Point would make one action-packed, kick-ass, worthy of gracing the big screen, box-office blockbuster with something for the alpha’s and romantics alike. Someone get on that would you? Jerry Bruckheimer? Harvey Weinstein? Ridley Scott? Someone please!

Well done Ms. Clare. I bow down to your amazing storytelling. Now when’s the next book out?

From The Author's Website:

Read An Excerpt Here

Betrayed by another operative, Deputy U.S. Marshal Zach McBride has endured a week of torture and interrogation at the hands of a bloodthirsty Mexican drug cartel. Ready to give his life if he must, he remains unbroken—until he hears the cries of an American woman.

Although Natalie is only a voice in the darkness of their shared prison, her plight brings renewed strength to Zach's battered body. With her help, he overpowers their captors, and they flee through the desert toward the border, the attraction between them flaring hotter than the Sonoran sun.

But past loss and tragedy leave both of them reluctant to follow their hearts, even when the passion between them reaches its breaking point. Faced with feelings neither expected, they fight to stay ahead of the danger that hunts them as forces more powerful than they can imagine conspire to destroy them both…