November 26, 2013

Review: Broken

Broken By CJ Lyons
Available now from Sourcebooks Fire
Review copy
Read my interviews (old) and (new) with CJ and my review of Lifelines

Sheltered Scarlet Killian wants a chance at the life of a normal high-school girl.  But she's barely convinced her overprotective parents that she'll be alright, especially her nurse stepmom.  But Scarlet has spent her life in the hospital due to a rare heart disease, and she wants to live.


I loved the depiction of Scarlet's high-school life.  It was a nice balance of the better parts of high school and the bad parts.  She gets bullied by some jocks due to her portable defibrillator, which she carries in a wheelie backpack, and her mother frequently popping in to make sure she's taking her vitamins.  (Did I mention her mom is the school nurse?)  At the same time, she makes some friends in her support group and biology class.  Two of them are cute boys, of course.  But Scarlet talks about her attractions to a friend and decides to pursue only one of the boys.

My main complaint is that the thriller elements take a bit too long to come into play.  It makes since on a character level, since Scarlet is quite naive.  But when the tension ratchets up in the last quarter, any less naive reader already has a good idea about what's going on.  Most of the actual suspense comes from whether Scarlet will reach the police in time.

I enjoyed BROKEN quite a bit, and didn't mind the shift in tone to a thriller too much because I knew it was coming.  Just go into the book aware that much of it reads like a straight contemporary.  And that's fine, because Scarlet's journey to independence is a good story.

2 comments:

  1. Hmmm... I have seen mixed reviews of this one. The cover art is gorgeous, and I am shallow and drawn to shiny things, so that was a factor in my interest. But I'm glad to see you liked this. I understand that it isn't without flaws, and I'm glad for the warning that it reads as contemporary for much of the book - that is very useful to me in deciding whether or not to get it now (I won't right away, as I'm in this terrible contemporary slump).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The cover is super pretty - I love the sort of sea glass effect. And hey, we're all suckers to covers, whether we admit it or not.

      Delete

Thanks for commenting! To reduce spam I moderate all posts older than 14 days.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...