Brighter When Broken

by Julie Grayson

Lachlan Kelley-Mayer’s life is a gilded cage—inherited wealth, a charming husband, and a foundation praised for its charity. But when she wakes in a damp basement, chained to a dirty mattress, she realizes the her husband Jack’s most cunning merger is her murder. The ransom demand is a farce. The bruises are staged. And the flickering bulb above her head isn’t just failing—it’s a mirror of her dying trust.



As hired kidnappers Marek and Jenna tighten their grip, Lachlan discovers Jack’s her fortune, her legacy, her life, erased in a blaze of a “tragic accident.” But Lachlan knows his secrets—the offshore accounts, the proxy signatures, the bodies he’s buried. To survive, she’ll weaponize every fracture Jack created, pitting her captors against each other and turning their blades back on the man who hired them.



Brighter When Broken is a razor-wire thriller about betrayal’s intimate violence and the scalding light of revenge. With the visceral tension of Gone Girl and the psychological ferocity of The Silent Patient, this novelette pulses with a When the one who vowed to love you becomes the monster under your bed, how far will you go to burn his kingdom down?

31 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 10, 2025

About the author

I am an architect of desire, a sorceress of smut, and proud purveyor of naughty tales. With five provocative collections and over fifty scintillating stories to my name, my mission is to make you blush, think, and feel—without an ounce of shame.

Reviews

[Dimitris Margetas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The language is beautiful, almost poetic. The descriptions are impressive. It starts strong and promising. The book was too short for me. The story could be more complex. It felt like a sample or a preview from a psychological thriller.

[Aaron Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Julie Grayson’s Brighter When Broken is a compact bit of writing. Coming in at barely thirty pages, it is actually a novelette, a kind of pint-sized novella. Being thus, there is not a lot of room for world building, character development, and absolutely no storage space for sub-plots or secondary story lines. So what’s a writer to do?

Writing this kind of story takes a particular set of skills, and Grayson clearly has these in her toolkit. Without time to flesh out characters, an author might be tempted to fall back on stereotypes, allowing the reader’s shared understanding through stereotype to do a lot of the heavy lifting in fleshing out the thespians on the page. But not here; somehow, Grayson gives every character an appropriate amount of... character. There is also some excellent use of flashbacks to fill in the protagonist’s backstory, which helps to make sense of the frightening immediacy of her situation that appears to us on the first page.

Give it a read. I suspect you’re only complaint will be how it’s over so quickly.

[Pekka Harju-Autti · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Brighter When Broken" is a raw and emotionally charged novel that explores resilience, identity, and the hidden fractures beneath seemingly strong lives. I really liked the prose, capturing both the beauty and brutality of human vulnerability. Its characters feel vividly real, too bad that the story is short - the characters could have been developed much further. A haunting story with skillful writing that proves brokenness can become a source of unexpected light.

[Razvan-Gabriel Popa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another solid story from this author, but very different from the first I read, proving that Julie Grayson can easily switch from humor and satire to blood-chilling thriller. I won't spoiler anything, but you're very close to the viewpoint character and the story feels intimate. You can feel the oppression, the darkness, the pain, the need for retribution. It's a quick read that leaves you wanting for more.