Lovelorn Should Have Kept Them All

Broken Things

By: Lauren Oliver

Grade: D

A couple of years ago Brynn, Mia and Summer were obsessed with the tale of Lovelorn. A book with a Shadow creature that accepts sacrifices. A book with no ending. They were determined to write their own. They played at Lovelorn. And when Summer was killed in a sacrifice style way Brynn, Mia and local boy Owen were the main suspects.

Quite frankly I wish Lovelorn had really opened them up and swallowed them whole.

Let’s do good first.

Oliver’s a good writer and tends to thread stories around good or at least popular ideas. Though this is seemingly influenced by the Slender Man stuff a couple of years ago. While I’m not fond of that I do love the idea of stories having power for good and ill.

I also thought the town turning against the girls almost witch burning style was interesting and if explored more could have been really effective.

The stuff I didn’t like?

Well, first there’s the torture and death of a poor innocent animal. If I had known about that I wouldn’t have picked this up. More so (and this is just my honest opinion okay) but if you do torture and kill an animal in the most painful way possible I’m immediately not going to give a shit what happens to you.

I didn’t mind Mia that much. It was even interesting the ruination of their lives. Though I found it hard to believe and a little too cutesy that Brynn had spent years in rehabs in the manner that she did. I’ve had friends in rehab. You might be able to beat them for a while but that was just a little too much.

Points for including an overweight character. No points for never letting us forget it. (Which- over emphasis on a characters weight is something that bugged me about Replica as well.)

The end also felt really out of left field. Like I can’t say that it didn’t make sense (because well why not?) but for me it just didn’t really bring it together. On top of that there’s an idiotic decision at the end that I was just shaking my head at but hey even one of the characters knew it was stupid.

So Broken Things was a disappointment for me but that’s heavily weighted by personal feelings about the animal thing. Otherwise its still a pretty mediocre book. I also picked up Sawkill Girls which seems along this same line. Hopefully I have better luck with it.

Recommend: Unfortunately no.