Warning! This review may contain a few spoilers from the book. If you're uncomfortable with that thought, please go ahead and click away. Thanks!
After reading this book, I like to think that I am a generous person. I gave this book three stars, but it definitely deserved one or two. In the most recent review I made (The Cellar by Natasha Preston), I complained about the book not making much sense. That book wasn't nearly as bad as this one. I thought maybe it was just me and my lack of observation skills, but once I read more reviews on Good reads, I realized that many people had this problem.
The book is about a group of five teens that head up a mountain in Arizona to a cabin owned by one of the teens. There, they planned to play a murder-mystery RPG (Role-playing game) that they created before most of them graduate high school and leave for college. This is my first issue with the book: the RPG game. It's super confusing, especially when we're flopping from POV to POV. It is not explained in any detail, and it often leads the readers into extreme confusion and skipping pages to move on. The issue is that there are terms constantly used throughout the book, which caused me to be confused and have to revert back to the beginning to see if there was any information there to help me better understand. There wasn't.
My next issue: the POVs. The author decided to include POVs from all five teens. Usually, I love that idea. More POVs allow me to better understand thoughts and feelings and help me to find the culprit of the story. However, in this book, the characters are very poorly written. None of them have special qualities to them and while reading, I often had to turn back and remember whose POV I'm in. Nothing stood out about them and they were practically the same. "They are walking talking houseplants that are easily forgettable... Their chapters read exactly alike. I only know who is who when certain points of their chapters mention something specific that relates to that character" (Cesar, Good reads).
One last issue I have is the content of the story. Half of the book is just the characters looking back on past trauma. That would be okay if the trauma actually related to the story and didn't make up most of the plot. It wasn't necessary and was constantly repeating the same points over and over again. Not to mention, the author decided that romance was a good idea to include in the book. Throughout the book, these two lovers are constantly head over heels for each other, and it really wasn't needed. Of course, the author could've included some points throughout, but it constantly seemed like this book was a romance genre book. Lastly, as far as content, the ending was disappointing. From the beginning I knew who the culprit was. So, when the culprit was revealed, it was no surprise and it felt like a chore to read the rest of the book.
Of course, I could continue on with many things that I found boring or didn't like about the book, but it's best that I stop my ranting here. Like I mentioned before, I gave the book three stars. It definitely could've been improved, and because of this poorly written book, it has caused me to become uninterested in Marieke Nijkamp's other books, which were on my to-read list. This is not a book that I would recommend to other readers, as there are many other books I would recommend beforehand.
This is all for the review of Even If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp. Be sure to stay tuned for weekly updates on Blogger, Good reads, and Instagram. Thanks!
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