AT IT’S core, Fractured Love (Book 1) is a story about unrequited love between two young gay men, best friends since childhood, but it goes so much further than that and gets so much darker. It’s these disturbing twists that make Matthew Dante’s novel a highly successful queer thriller.
On the eve of graduating high school, Marc and Alex attend a party where nothing will ever be the same between them afterward. That night, Marc finally decides to tell Alex his true feelings, that his deep emotional connection to his best friend is much more than friendship, going far beyond anything platonic. Before getting the opportunity to reveal this truth, Marc commits an act of violence against a man acting sexually aggressively toward a very intoxicated Alex. From this point onward in the novel, Alex will never see Marc in the same benign, loving light again.
Fractured Love (Book 1) is a rollercoaster ride of thrills, punches to the gut, and eyes bugging out of your head that you will enjoy to no end. And yes, you will ask for more. And get it. What is the dark nature of obsession, and how far will someone go to protect themselves when they feel betrayed? Read this captivating novel by Matthew Dante and find out. I did, and I loved every second of the seductive nightmare ride.
MATTHEW DANTE’S Fractured Mind (Book 2) is a fascinating further exploration of the complicated relationship between Alex and Marc, two young gay men and best friends who grew up together as close as brothers. Only their relationship was never sexual nor romantic, as Marc had always wanted. In this dazzling m/m thriller, Dante further probes the dark realms of obsessive desire and unrequited love, where we learn that perhaps certain feelings are not as unrequited in Alex’s heart as we were led to believe in Fractured Love (Book 1).
At the beginning of the book, we discover that Alex is still consumed by depression and a crippling guilty conscience for his part in covering up a murder. Though traumatized by that and what he endured at the hands of Marc, Alex still finds himself questioning everything about what went down between them. The emerging belief that he might have misunderstood his own feelings, perhaps even underappreciated the powerful loyalty and affection shown to him by Marc, perplexes his troubled psyche. From here, Dante fully captures his audience’s attention with an extraordinarily unconventional love story between two young gay men learning to trust, understand, and cherish each other all over again within a gray area of morality.
BUT–Dante’s Fractured Mind (Book 2) is so much more than a continuation of the complicated relationship between best friends Marc and Alex begun in the first installment of the series. It is a fascinating treatise on the immorality and depravity of sociopaths and the twisted games they play with people’s lives for their own sadistic pleasures. The torturous life-or-death games Alex and Marc are forced to endure at the hands of the novel’s antagonists are spellbinding in their creativity and complexity. Really, they are just damn fun.
How far will a person go to protect the one they love most? Fractured Mind (Book 2) is darker than its predecessor, but this is a good thing because it elevates the novel’s adult themes and shows that Dante is not afraid to push the boundaries of his own writing and the comfort levels of his readers. Nothing here is derivative or overly gratuitous. This work shows Dante’s progressive maturation on themes of crime, love, and sexual appetites. Great stuff here!
Fractured Love (Book 1) is available for purchase at Amazon.ca and Amazon.com. Fractured Mind (Book 2) is available for purchase at Amazon.ca and Amazon.com. For more information about this author, follow Matthew Dante on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.
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