Review – Fault Lines by Rebecca Rogers Maher

The blurb:

Sarah Murphy plans other people’s weddings. She’s gorgeous and successful, but she also carries a dark secret.

At one of her events, she meets Joe Sullivan, a sexy photographer with a difficult past of his own. When he snaps a rare unguarded photograph of her and captures the real person hiding behind the facade, she feels exposed. To restore the upper hand, she tries to do what she always does: use sex to defuse the situation.

While Joe is eager to deepen his relationship with Sarah, he’s aware of her emotional shield and the way she disconnects from her body. Seeing her at her most vulnerable doesn’t scare him off, but he needs to know what she’s hiding.

Sarah has a tough decision to make. Does she want to go on living a lonely, emotionally frozen life? Or can she finally risk revealing the truth and move forward with Joe?

When Sarah is unable to control the situation with Joe with sex as she has done many times, it starts a cascade of emotions that she never wanted to deal with. Not only has she found a man that she can’t go numb on, the mentally ill uncle that raped her as a teen is back in her life, dying of cancer. As she tries to push all those feelings down and be the support system her mother needs, everything comes tumbling down. The fear, guilt, and self mutilation she thought she had conquered years ago are back and she can’t get the emotional distance she has used to survive all these years.

Fault Lines is a stark and raw story of recovery. While beautifully written, it was difficult to read at times. It’s novella length but I had to take frequent breaks because it can be overwhelming. It brought tears more than once as Sarah broke and struggled to find her way back. The moment when she decides to confide in Joe was perfect and the scenes with her best friend Jane were some of the best moments of female friendship that I’ve read in romance. There are no secrets between them and Jane is fierce in her love for her troubled friend.

Jane gripped Sarah’s wrist, hard. “You listen to me.”

“No, Jane, it’s—”

“No! Listen to me. You were a kid. Fourteen is not an adult. Especially not when the person hurting you is someone you trusted and someone you loved. It is not your fault, Sarah. Do you hear me? Just because your mother didn’t see it doesn’t mean it wasn’t wrong. Even if you tell her and she ends up defending him, it won’t mean that it wasn’t wrong. He raped you. You were not to blame for that.”

Sarah wrapped her fingers around Jane’s grip and leaned her forehead against their joined hands. Her whole body shook.

“Don’t worry about forgiving him, Sarah. Whatever it is you think you did…you need to see it for what it is. It wasn’t your fault. If you want to forgive someone, start with yourself.”

The only problem I had with Fault Lines is it is labeled as romance and I don’t feel that it is. Sarah and Joe have very little page time together and when the “I love you”s came, I didn’t buy it. It is also told entirely from Sarah’s POV and I think that added to the non-romance feel. Joe was more of the supporting cast than the hero and his importance to the story was less than Jane’s or Sarah’s mom.

If the book was just fiction, I would have given it 5 stars.  It was amazing and I would love to read another story about Sarah a few years into her recovery. But given the romance label it has and the unfulfilled expectations that gives, I’m giving it a 4.

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: September 24th, 2012
Format: Digital

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