Break to You by Neal Shusterman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
4.5 ⭐ Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC!
I will never get tired of books that shed light on where we have failed in our society. This may sound strange but it is almost encouraging to become aware of these issues as the truth of the matter is always so much more complex than we could have imagined. In Break to You we are shown what could be the hearts and raw emotions of teenagers in a juvenile detention center. Still they refuse to be bound to what the world tells them that they can amount to and cling to what lifelines can be found in such a bleak environment. In this case Jon and Adriana find each other.
Our justice system is broken and it is beyond sad how many kids and teens are being failed by it. I had no idea that it was a real thing for kids who have reached the end of the line in foster care and have nowhere else to go will sometimes end up in detention centers such as this one. The consequences that this could have on a young person who has already suffered so much were realistically portrayed in Silas’s character and his story definitely hit me the hardest out of them all. The dynamics between characters and especially how they come to interact with our main character’s was really interesting. Not everyone’s story of how they came to be at Compass got told but each character proved that it is never a single mistake or circumstance that is responsible.
There were some complex moral issues being discussed here and, though I wish some plot points could have been expanded on as I feel like we only scratched the surface on what I wanted to know about these kids and their stories, I was able to become SO INVESTED in such a short amount of time and can safely say that it did its job in making me curious and left needing to research more on this topic. Such an eye-opening read by an incredible author that I highly recommend giving a try! Happy Reading 🙂
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