Book Review: Break

                                                       

Book Review: Break by Hannah Moskowitz

Blurb: Jonah is on a mission to break every bone in his body. Everyone knows that broken bones grow back stronger than they were before. And Jonah wants to be stronger—needs to be stronger—because everything around him is falling apart. Breaking, and then healing, is Jonah's only way to cope with the stresses of home, girls, and the world on his shoulders.


Characters: Moskowitz's characters are truly made great with their interaction with each other. The greatest relationship in this book is between that of Jonah and his brother Jesse. The evolution of their relationship through the book is strikingly realistic to teenagers, and because this book was written by someone close to the age of her characters, it really made the characters, oh, I don't know, feel like real teenagers. Their dialogue was very real and the relationships, (though slightly twisted due to Jonah's twisted nature) are very real. This novel is very character-driven.

I decree: 4/5

Plot: The plot wasn't as straight forward as a lot of other self-destructive books. Though we can see Jonah going further and further downhill, the end of this book really took me by surprise-- in a good way. This book is a mastery of tension and really knows how to pull the reader down. The tension mounts and you can feel it building and building. I loved the excitement and tension this book could instill. Though I was very sucked in by the end, when things begin to spiral out of control for Jonah, it paints really strong emotion without drowning the reader in self-pity.

I decree: 5/5

Fundamentals: I did have some problems with the fundamentals of this book. At one point I saw there was a missing quotation mar around a sentence, and other time it seemed like there were a lot of missing commas where there should have been. Though this was mostly my nitpicking, and the lack of commas did create a sensation of panic and thoughts running together, so I can just put it off as being stylistic.

I decree: 4/5

Overall: A VERY powerful book. I was extremely impressed with this, since it was another book I bought on a whim. (I should do this more often.) I was sucked in right from the beginning, but the mounting tensions made the pages fly by. I felt as though I could not put this down. I strongly suggest this for anyone, especially those that are struggling to heal.

13/15 stars