Broken Things by Lauren Oliver

Abstract

Reviewed by: Broken Things by Lauren Oliver Karen Coats Oliver, Lauren Broken Things. Harper/HarperCollins, 2018 [416p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-222413-2 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-06-222415-6 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 7-10 After Mia and Brynn were wrongfully accused and subsequently acquitted of the brutal murder of their best friend, Summer, when they were thirteen, their lives have become grim exercises in surviving harsh public opinion. For the past five years, Brynn has faked addictions that keep her in rehab facilities, while Mia homeschools amidst her mother's hoarding. While clearing out some of her mother's stuff, Mia comes across a paper that sheds new light on the murder. She retrieves Brynn from her latest rehab center, and the girls, along with three friends, set out to uncover what really happened. Despite the fact that the narration alternates between Mia and Brynn and the past and the present, Mia and Brynn remain mostly flat and static, and while their fascination with a fantasy novel provides an interesting premise, none of the main characters evokes much empathy or emerges as more than a stock figure of dysfunctional YA girl ensembles. Mia's new friend, Abby, however, breaks many molds as a fat fashionista with a robust and profitable online fandom and a quick but non-acerbic wit. The mystery fishtails its way through multiple red herrings and the ending proves surprising if anticlimactic. That said, the idea of being so encased in a fantasy—be it a book or a toxic friendship—that you miss what's really going on around you offers up much food for thought for readers who enjoy probing the motivations of broken teenage girls. KC [End Page 133] Copyright © 2018 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois