Break

I pounded through this book in three days. It is a pretty fast read, but I usually don't get so attached to a book that I just have to keep reading and reading until its done. That said, even though I thought the ending was slightly weak, the book really had me hooked. The tone and pace of the story are very well done, and the characters are engaging and flawed in interesting ways. As I've repeated so many times, I just had to keep reading once I was started, I was always excited to find out what happens next with Jonah's life spiraling more and more out of his control. So its good, but its pretty dark and there's a lot of swears in the book, not too big a deal for most, but I'm told this is a young adult novel. So for you parents out there, use discretion, its definitely got some R rated dialogue. Bottom line, awesome book!

From the first page, the author had me hooked. She uses dialogue (with some swearing so Reader Beware) extremely well to create three-dimensional young characters. The premise seems odd until the reader begins to understand the characters. It then all comes together. The book is emotional and intelligent.

Teen author Hannah Moskowitz blows her readers away with this stunning debut novel. It's not often that you see a debut novel deal with self-destructive behavior, a family struggling to manage a chronically and acutely ill child, and the natural and normal rollercoaster of teenage life. Moskowitz treads a careful line between "too much" and "not enough" with these touchy subjects, but does so artfully, weaving narrator Jonah's voice between truly horrifying descriptions of Jonah's crunching bones and his brother Jesse's potentially lethal allergic reactions to--well, everything. This is a subject that could easily get overblown, but even in the most dramatic aspects of Moskowitz's delicate subjects, Jonah's voice is real as he talks himself down from internal panics to real actions. His deliberate and careful breaking of his own body is gruesome, but believable. As with all YA novels, pacing and realism are amongst the most important. Moskowitz's strengths lie in her dialogue and, without a doubt, her pacing. The suspense is built so that the reader is caught up with Jonah's increasing sense that things are not as in control as he wished they were, and the reader never feels rushed along for the sake of page length or plot points. Moskowitz's very real subjects are strong enough to overwhelm the only scene, towards the end, which trembles at the edge of unbelievable. By that point, however, the reader is so torn between being sympathetic towards Jonah's plight, and being horrified at the world crumbling around him, that this minor issue shouldn't hang them up much. Overall, an excellent, complex novel from a young, promising author. I would recommend this to any teen or fan of young adult lit.

Jonah is on a mission to break all his bones. There, you've got the plot of the book. Not so fast. Because a person's life isn't isolated. Jonah spends most of his time (when he's not intentionally falling off skateboards) trying to save his younger brother from dying from food allergies. His best friend is egging him on to keep breaking bones, while his brother is having reactions all over the place and begging him to stop. His parents are clueless and trying to take care of a baby who won't stop crying. Everything going on in Jonah's life pushes him to keep going. The reason for his actions make sense, in a way. When you're reading this book, you ARE Jonah. You are completely in his head, and while the leaps in logic seem crazy to the outside world, when you're Jonah, it all ties together. And as a reader, I was dragged into his thoughts and emotions. Moskowitz has written a fantastic debut novel. Jonah's voice stays present through the whole book and doesn't lose much steam in the middle, the way many first-person novels do. I would recommend this book to anyone (as long aren't a pansy when it comes to blood and pain.)