Book Title: The Care of Broken Things
Author and Publisher: October Arden
Release Date: August 1, 2025
Tense/POV: Third person, past tense, single POV
Genres: Contemporary MMM prison romance (leans into literary with a strong romantic core)
Tropes: Grumpy/sunshine, found family, hurt/comfort, healing from grief, obsessive devotion, fake dating, prison husband, marriage of convenience, wrongfully imprisoned, morally gray characters, polyamory that heals
Themes: Trauma recovery, self-loathing to self-worth, redemption through love, the violence of tenderness
Heat Rating: 2 out of 5
Length: 82 000 words/320 pages
It is a standalone book and does not end on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links - Available in Kindle Unlimited
Some loves rewrite your sentence
Blurb
Samuel has spent years building walls.
Not the prison’s concrete ones, but the kind that keep lives from bleeding into each other. As the prison’s self-appointed librarian, he’s carved out a fragile peace where silence is his shield. The inmates call him The Ice Queen—a title he wears like armor. After a lifetime of being preyed upon, he knows better than to let anyone close.
Then Eli arrives like sunlight through bulletproof glass.
A wrongfully convicted pediatrician, and unbearably kind, Eli is everything Samuel knows to avoid, so when he steps in to protect the man, it’s supposed to be a one-time act of mercy.
But Eli’s husband has another plan.
Nathaniel—who looks at Samuel like he’s something more than a convict—makes a request that shatters everything:
"Be his prison husband. Love him where I can’t."
It’s a lie that should be easy. Samuel’s an expert at deception. But the longer he plays the role, the more the lines blur: Eli’s warmth seeping into his frozen bones, Nathaniel’s quiet strength, the whispered secrets of Eli’s daughter who trusts only him.
Now the man who built his life on solitude hoards these moments like contraband.
Some loves rewrite your sentence.
A devastating queer romance about the families we carve from our own ribs, and the love that refuses to let us stay broken.
Excerpt
Twenty minutes later he kicked Eli’s bed. It had been a day and a half since the library incident, and he hadn’t spoken a word to him since. He’d thought Eli’s perseverance would continue, but maybe the man was learning about personal space. He knew he ought to be happy about that, but the change unnerved him. He didn’t like things that didn’t come with explanations.
Eli didn’t open his eyes. “Hi, Samuel.”
“How’d you know it was me?”
“Your particular brand of hospitality.” The man paused. “Also, you smell like Reese’s cups.”
“You can smell that from here?”
He took a somewhat discreet sniff of himself, but all he could detect was the shitty prison detergent.
“Hunger sharpens the sense.”
He was appalled. “You still haven’t—It’s been 48 hours!”
“I’ve done 100 hour fasts before.”
That boggled the mind. “Why?”
“To rest my gut after glutenings, mostly,” Eli said. “Why is it that you can ask questions of me, but won’t answer any of mine?”
True to form, he ignored the question and upended his new purchases onto the bed. Eli’s eyes sprang open. “What—”
“No more fasting.”
Eli picked up one of the packages on his chest. Sardines.
“They’ve got Omega 3’s, right? That’s good for inflammation. There’s some salmon there, too, in those pouches.”
Eli sat up. Packages and pouches slithered off him and onto the bedspread.
Suddenly nervous, Samuel found himself rambling. “I wasn’t sure if your commissary account was up and running yet, and the stuff I gave you before were things you couldn’t eat, so I—”
The man was smiling. Not smirking, not grinning—and Samuel knew he was in trouble.
“You’re amazing,” Eli said, as if he hadn’t just ruined a man’s life. “Thank you. And you’re right. My commissary account still isn’t linked up yet.”
As if that wasn’t enough, Eli then swept a space clear on the bed and pointed his invitation. It was the smile Samuel would blame later. He sat where indicated, more pliant and cooperative than he’d ever been in his life.
Eli was impressed. “This is a better haul than I was expecting. I might actually survive on this.”
Samuel was beginning to come back to himself. It was easier now that Eli was sorting through the food, like the spell of that smile had been broken—or at least weakened.
“Who’s Nathaniel?”
Eli flashed him a grin. “My murderer-hating husband.” He ripped open a bag of trail mix. “Don’t suppose I could trouble you to eat the M&M's out of these for me?”
He expected the man to dig in, but Eli only ate an almond, a cashew, and a peanut before setting the package down. That broke his brain a little. “Aren’t you hungry?”
Eli brought the pouch of sardines up to his mouth and ripped it open with his teeth. “Labels are useful, but they’re not foolproof. If I haven’t reacted in half an hour, I’ll eat a little more.”
Samuel knew that if he’d gone more than two days without food, he’d have gnawed his own leg off. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
“Hmm?”
“You knew you couldn’t eat what I bought you, and you knew they’d continue to keep screwing up the special meal thing. So why didn’t you come to me? We could have done this two days ago.”
Eli fished a sardine out with his fingers. The slimy things looked repulsive, and the smell alone was enough to knock someone out. Eli caught him staring and tilted the pouch toward him. “Pardon my rudeness. Would you like some?”
He had to swallow bile. “Your husband’s never going to kiss you again.”
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