BOOK REVIEW...If You Stay (Beautifully Broken #1) by Courtney Cole

24-year old Pax Tate is an asshole. 
Seriously. 

He’s a tattooed, rock-hard bad-boy with a bad attitude to match. 

But he’s got his reasons. 

His mother died when Pax was seven, leaving a hole in his heart filled with guilt although he doesn’t understand why. What he does know is that he and his dad are left alone and with more issues than they can count. 

As Pax grew up, he tried to be the kid his father always wanted; the perfect golden boy, but it didn’t work. His dad couldn’t overcome his grief long enough to notice and Pax couldn’t keep up the impossible perfect façade. 
So he slipped far, far from it. 

Now, he uses drugs and women to cope with the ugliness, the black void that he doesn’t want to deal with. If he pretends that the emptiness isn’t there, then it isn’t, right? 
Wrong. 

And it’s never more apparent than when he meets Mila. 
Sweet, beautiful Mila Hill is the fresh air to his hardened frown, the beauty to his ugly heart. He doesn’t know how to not hurt her, but he quickly realizes that he’s got to figure it out because he needs her to breathe.

When memories of his mother’s death resurface from where he’s repressed them for so long, Mila is there to catch him when the guilt starts making sense. Mila is the one…the one who can save him from his broken troubled heart; from his issues, from the emptiness. 

But only if he can stop being an asshole long enough to allow it. 

He knows that. And he’s working on it. 

But is that enough to make her stay?
Published February 5th 2013 by Lakehouse Press

When I first started reading this book, Pax kind of annoyed me.  I thought he was the pity me pity me kind of character who just brooded and thought that the world was against him.

Little did I know that after reading the truth about him and why he was so 'broken,' I had a new look of him.  I could see why he feels such torture and a void in his soul that the only way to deck it out is to immerse himself in drugs and women.

As for Mila, well, Mila is an angel.  So pure hearted and understanding.  I absolutely loved her and understood her hang ups at first regarding Pax and why she made him work to earn her trust throughout the book.

A truly heart warming and heart wrenching story.

Also, how rare is it for the beginning of the book to start off with the main guy puking all over you?! lol What a way to begin the book!

My Rating:

-Overall : 9
-Plot : 8.5
-Writing : 9
-Characters : 9
-Cover : 8.5