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Brenda Perlin

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Burnt Promises (Brooklyn and Bo Chronicles: Book One) Second Edition Kindle Edition

by Brenda Perlin (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 64 ratings

Book 2 of 3: Brooklyn and Bo Chronicles

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Bo and Brooklyn’s relationship is tested while Bo’s soon-to-be-ex wife tries to hold on for dear life. Bo’s ongoing divorce battle seems never-ending.   The main character, Brooklyn must learn many valuable lessons about herself, not without making many costly mistakes along the way. Now that she has found what she considered, her “soul-mate” in Bo, she would have to continue to defend herself against even her closest of friends, family members, and Bo’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Ruth.   This first person account chronicles the inexhaustible struggles she faces with the man that she loves. Brooklyn must learn a thing or two about patience as Bo’s divorce settlement seems to be never ending. Throughout her journey, Brooklyn shares some of Ruth’s intimate emails to Bo and gives you a good look into the mind of a woman scorned.

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About the Author

Brenda Perlin is an independent adult contemporary fiction author. Brenda evokes passionate responses in her readers by using a provocatively unique writing style. Her latest book, Burnt Promises, captures the soul-wrenching conflicts of a personal struggle for emotional fulfillment. Ever since Brenda was a child she has been fascinated with writing. She draws her biggest inspiration from Judy Blume. This sparked a passion in Brenda to pursue personal expression through writing. Once she was old enough to go to coffee shops alone, Brenda recalls losing herself in the world of writing, all while documenting her ideas on paper napkins. "There is really no creative process, I just write," - Brenda Perlin

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00N54OV0S
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Blossoming Press (August 27, 2014)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 27, 2014
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1855 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 174 pages

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4.4 64 ratings

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Brenda Perlin

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Brenda Perlin is an independent contemporary fiction author of six titles and numerous short stories.

Ever since she was a child, Brenda has been fascinated with the writing process, writing on napkins in coffee shops every chance she got.

Her first series, the Brooklyn and Bo Chronicles, captures the soul-wrenching conflicts of a couple struggling for fulfillment against those who would keep them apart. Next, Brenda ventured into the realm of animal rescue, Alex the Mutt, which explores the journey of love and loss of a beloved dog.

Her latest novel, PUNKS comes after Crime and PUNKishment, L.A. Punk Rocker and Punk Rocker, anthologies where authors wrote about the music scene in the late seventies to the early eighties: a time when she was in Hollywood meeting famous bands and enjoying the new music scene. L.A. Punk Snapshots, her first photography, book shares quotes from famous and not-so-famous music enthusiasts and old photographs from the early punk scene in Los Angeles.

While Brenda is still listening to her favorite bands from the eighties, Billy Idol remains the ultimate King Rocker and music is her drug of choice.

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4.4 out of 5

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Tamy

Gripping emotions and raw honesty!

Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2013

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I really loved Home Wrecker I and could not wait to read II. Home Wrecker I was raw, honest, and emotionally gripping and Home Wrecker II, if possible, was even more so. Both books explore tough issues. Brooklyn's real self is laid bare for all of us to see. She shares her past, her motivations, and her own guilt with a candidness that I can but admire. The moral dilemma presented here is something many have faced.

Brooklyn was raised to live a life of integrity, and had endeavored to do so all her life. Never did she for one minute think she would ever be `the other woman.' It wasn't in her psyche. She wasn't a cheater, a Home Wrecker.

Brooklyn never planned to get a divorce, hurting those she loved and sacrificing relationships in the process. But something changed in her when she struggled with a near fatal illness. Life was short, why live on eggshells and just exist? Why be afraid and unhappy? She never thought she would exchange security for the unknown either. But sometimes, security comes at too high a price. And for Brooklyn, this was exactly the case. Home Wrecker II delves deeper into the whys, showing the reader just how shattered her marriage really was.

For me, loving Bo and Brooklyn was easy. I found myself rooting for them. They both seemed to be paired with not only the wrong people, but to ones that were harming them to their very core. Brooklyn was married to a angry, controlling man and Bo was married to a very unstable, selfish woman. As they try and start a new life together, the all consuming trial in their lives is Bo's ex, Ruth. Her emails and calls to him only go to show a very embittered woman who is quickly losing her grip on reality.

This story serves to remind us that there are two sides to every situation. For Brooklyn, she continues to examine her motives and her actions; that after living through much heartache and oppression, she finally is able to stand up for herself. She is now in charge of herself as a person. She fully accepts her own actions, both good and bad, and is working on forgiving herself. I look forward to the next book and to seeing the growth that both of them go through.

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"Finding Salvation and Redemption"

Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2014

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Written as a memoir, Brooklyn Rosen chronicles her life's struggle which has left her with much pain and sorrow. She had been raised in a highly moral, ethical, and well parented home and wonders why she has turned into a home wrecker, as she describes herself. Why did she frequently make poor choices? Before she had connected up with Gerard, 10 years older than her, she has an open relationship with Joey, her aerobics instructor who is mostly all about himself. However, she feels he is worthy enough of her friendship. Eventually she loses her appeal for Joey and feels Gerard is someone she can trust and would be loyal to her. He was a nice guy but not her optimal choice. He was falling in love with Brook, while she felt he was more a dear friend. Looking back at her life, Brook realizes she'd allowed many people to influence her. She hadn't been standing strong with the values taught her as a child. Gerard seems to love and respect her, but in time he seems to pressure her by trying to change her, to do his will. In time, Gerard loses his respect for her and she finds it easy to walk away from the empty marriage. Having lost her mom, having a loveless marriage, and facing a debilitating disease, Brook is desolate, depressed, and has little or no faith in obtaining a comfortable future. She has barely survived all kinds of emotional and physical challenges. Soon, Brook and Bo begin their affair together while having to cope with ex-spouses and family and friends who do not agree with their actions. They've become cheaters. This is a very revealing, emotional story which is very well written about shedding the guilt of walking away from a failed marriage and stepping forward and creating a rewarding future. A very poignant analysis of one's life.

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S.A. Molteni

An Emotional, Thought Provoking Tale

Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2014

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Burnt Promises by Brenda Perlin is the second book in the Brooklyn and Bo Chronicles and one that fills in the rest of Brooklyn's story after the ending of the first book, Shattered Reality.

The story of Brooklyn and Bo is complicated to say the least. They are finally together, but cannot seem to get away from the hatefulness of Bo's soon to be ex-wife, Ruth. Maneuvering through the legal system, Bo is faced with many obstacles in his pursuit of freedom from his crazy, over the top wife. How long will it take before the divorce is final? It could be years - from Brooklyn's perspective.

Brooklyn gets assaulted by Ruth at the gym where Bo and Brooklyn first meet. Ruth gets away before the police come. Brooklyn gets a restraining order on Ruth. Brooklyn must also endure Ruth's anti-semitic verbal attacks through out the course of the divorce proceedings.

In Burnt Promises, the reader is taken on a roller-coaster ride of emotion and I found myself wanting to scream at Ruth for her stubbornness, craziness and all out hatefulness. The woman was scorned, I get that, but sometimes you just need to cut your losses and move on.

I felt empathy and compassion for Bo and Brooklyn, they found their soul mate in each other and just want to live happily ever after. Hopefully they can do that when Ruth finally lets go of the marriage that has been broken for years and she allows Bo to move on.

Brenda Perlin has a wonderful way of weaving an emotional, thought-provoking tale. I thoroughly enjoyed this second installment of the Brooklyn and Bo Chronicles and have already read the next book, Fractured Vows, which gives a great perspective of the story from Bo's point of view.

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E.L. Lindley

One Woman's Truth

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 5, 2015

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Burnt Promises is the second book in the Brooklyn and Bo Chronicles by Brenda Perlin and like its predecessor, Shattered Reality, is written with a searing honesty. Perlin’s style of faction is almost naked in its rawness; she offers us the bare details and leaves us to make of them what we will.

Where Shattered Reality presents Brooklyn’s life from childhood to her relationship with Bo, Burnt Promises focuses primarily on that relationship. Brooklyn meets Bo while they are both married to other people and the subsequent complications reflect a reality for a lot of people. Bo’s wife sets in motion divorce proceedings that drag them all through the mud and ultimately benefit nobody but the lawyers involved.

Brooklyn was raised in a traditional home, where she was expected to maintain high moral standards. Like many women, she was encouraged to put other people’s needs before her own and became a ‘people pleaser’. Throughout the novel, it is clear that Brooklyn judges herself more harshly than anyone else could. She is the one who labels herself a “home wrecker” and obviously feels a great deal of guilt over her failed marriage.

I think Burnt Promises actually works on two levels. On the one hand, it is an engrossing tale of a woman’s struggle to accept herself and make sense of her relationship but it is also a form of social history. Brooklyn’s story is such that it chronicles what life is like for many women who were born in the 1960s. The specifics may not be identical but there are many issues bubbling beneath the surface that I suspect lots of women will be able to relate to.

In common with many women, Brooklyn suffers from a lack of self-esteem, which leads her to a disastrous long term relationship with serial womaniser, Joey. Her inability to withstand Joey’s excuses exacerbate her feelings of worthlessness and her consequent attachment to Gerard, whom she marries, is primarily born out of the fact that he is nice to her. The marriage is doomed, Gerard is ten years Brooklyn’s senior and resents her free spirit, trying instead to control her. Brooklyn had a complex relationship with her father which has clearly impacted on her dealings with men, as her default setting seems to be to assume a passive role.

Despite marrying Gerard for the wrong reasons, Brooklyn tries to make it work, ignoring her own needs and feelings for fifteen years. When the marriage ends, it seems to Gerard to be out of the blue but that’s only because Brooklyn has never felt able to express her dissatisfaction with the relationship. It would have been easy for Perlin to cast Gerard as the villain of the piece but she goes to great lengths to show how he is damaged from his own parents’ divorce. He also takes good care of Brooklyn when she becomes ill with a neurological disorder but that consideration is not enough to base a marriage on. In fact, Brooklyn’s illness is a massive stress factor in a relationship that was never particularly strong to begin with. Brooklyn’s expectations for herself are so low, she probably would have settled for an unhappy marriage had she not met Bo, who represents a new beginning for her.

An interesting aspect of Burnt Promises is the way it reflects our society’s obsession with appearance and the impact that has on women. Exercise is a massive part of Brooklyn’s life; she was a fitness instructor prior to her illness and continues to spend a good deal of time in the gym after her recovery. There is poignancy in the fact that as she looks forward to a cruise with Bo, the first vacation of her adult life, one of her primary concerns is the potential weight gain she might experience. There is also a hilarious anecdote where Brooklyn compares her own lady parts to those of Pamela Anderson, whose vagina she has seen on a sex tape. At a time when young people are defining their own sexuality through porn and Brazilian waxes are the new norm, I found this episode incredibly relevant. Tellingly Bo’s ex-wife insults Brooklyn via her looks, which she obviously perceives as being more damaging than any other form of attack.
Perlin’s writing style is such that Brooklyn’s truth becomes the only truth. Even though I was aware that the novel is not necessarily autobiographical and, even if it were there are always many sides to any given story, I constantly found myself immersed in Brooklyn’s version of events. One of the reasons why Brooklyn’s truth is so compelling is the fair handed way in which Perlin delivers it. There are no villains, even Bo’s ex-wife, Ruth, who puts the couple through hell, is more mad than bad. In fact much of the humour in the novel comes from the emails that Ruth sends to Bo.

Burnt Promises is a novel that offers up a woman’s life for inspection and, through our relationship with Brooklyn, I think most readers will be forced to face truths about their own lives. It might not always be pretty but Burnt Promises is a reflection of reality for a lot of women trying to find their place in a so called modern world.

bookcollecter

A poignant tale of love and loss, courage and triumph

Reviewed in Spain on February 27, 2014

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I began reading this late at night and as I turned the pages, realised that with each page, my admiration for the author grew. Life is hard and Brenda Perlin left no stone unturned with an honest and descriptive account of love, loss, and survival. I was able to connect to the characters and to the story to such an extent, that it left me thinking about my own life and the parallels in the book. I loved this book and devoured it. I identified with the story and it was almost scary to admit the similarities.

Brenda Perlin is a brave and honest writer and I look forward to reading her other books.

Marky The Wizard

A Great Book About Real Life

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 4, 2015

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This is a terrific read for fans of reality fiction, fiction about real people and real lives.
I read it in about four hours and I found it difficult to put down. It has a compulsive readability.

Burnt Promises is about "Brooklyn", a beautiful LA gym instructor and ex-punk teenager who meets "Bo", a self made businessman twenty years her seniot, in the gym in which she teaches aerobics and cardio classes. They are attracted to each other, which is all well and good, all very Prosecco and pearls - if you ignore the fact that both are married to other people. Long marriages too. The story charts the breakdown of both of those marriages and the formation of the new union, in sometimes minute detail.

The supporting characters are terrific. There is"Ruth"; Bo's psychotic, vain, spendthrift and, (of course) extremely vengeful ex wife, who assaults Brooklyn in the gym and subsequently wages a campaign of Stalingradesque terror on her wayward then-husband, and "Gerard", Brooklyn's grumpy, controlling, bemused, slightly downbeat other half who deals with the schism in a different way altogether.

If you've ever been a wronged wife, a cuckolded husband, a guilty suitor about to rip the last remaining cells of life from someone else's dead marriage, or, better still, a woman on the brink of suicide who would sell herself to the devil to escape the prison of a union beyond repair, then you will recognise yourself in this and I found that to be the essence of the book.

If you enjoy writing about real life in all its glory, which I do, then you will enjoy Burnt Promises. Heartily recommend.

Joey

Another chance to sit down with Brooklyn

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 12, 2014

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Burnt Promises (aka Home Wrecker II) is the continuing story of Brooklyn and Bo as they start to live their life together. Bo has asked his wife for a divorce and she seems to be dragging her heels as long as possible to stop Brooklyn and Bo from being able to live happily. It's told, as in the first book, from the perspective of Brooklyn and in little snippets as if you were on the couch with the character talking about her life. It pulls you in and makes you feel like you're her friend and you end up rooting for Brooklyn and Bo to find happiness and for the struggles they have faced, and will continue to face to end and to allow them to have some time together with Ruth (Bo's soon to be ex wife) from spewing her volatile anger at them both. Brenda Perlin has a way with words and a unique way of telling a story. Highly recommended.

Maria

Full of raw emotion.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 5, 2014

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A very personal and realistic account of the issues raised and behaviour caused when marriages breakdown. Due to the style of writing I felt I was sat beside Brooklyn as she picked over the bones of her past, her guilt at the spiralling effect on friends and family of her decisions and supported her new partner through his "messy" divorce. Thought provoking, it shows there are no "winners" when relationships fail and hope can only spring from new relationships and the friendships that do stay strong. There was some humour and some interesting insights into the fallibility of all of us, when we feel hurt or wronged.
Although it was about families falling apart, the importance of family came through very strongly.

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Burnt Promises (Brooklyn and Bo Chronicles: Book One) Second Edition Kindle Edition

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