Jennifer Shaw Wolf

"Obsession isn't love any more than vengeance is justice."

Wow. this book was exactly what I'd hoped it would be. Lots of mystery and gore and confusion wrapped into an interesting plot.

Rachel, although dead as soon as the book starts, is very much a real character in this book - her personality is so big and so wild that it's almost as if she's still alive.

Jaycee is sweet and goody-goody but you can really see how this situation and losing Rachel really transforms who she is and what she is show more willing to do - in order to bring justice for Rachel.

It kept me guessing until the very end. I had my theories and I had ideas but it wasn't until it was all out there, in the last chapter, that I really found out everything. Very well done, [a:Jennifer Shaw Wolf|4750309|Jennifer Shaw Wolf|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1305234704p2/4750309.jpg]. This one will definitely stick with me. show less

Wow. After my last Apocalypsies read was such a disappointment, I was a little worried that my streak of awesome reads from those guys might be over. Well, most assuredly not. Breaking Beautiful captured my interest right from the beginning, and the continued to suck me more and more. Although the cover didn't capture my interest, I am impressed, now having read the book, with how much more accurate it is than most. Good job, Bloomsbury!

Breaking Beautiful is another one of those books that show more falls into the 'wonderful but so depressing it will feel like you're being eviscerated emotionally' category. I've been reading a lot of these lately, and apparently I love them, even though as a younger reader I mostly only liked happy books. I do not want to think too much about what this change in my tastes says about me.

Allie definitely doesn't handle things the way she should have. Sometimes I wanted to cry and ask her what she was thinking. BUT there is no way I could not feel completely sympathetic towards her. She behaved the way she did because she went through so much emotional and physical abuse. In no way will I judge her for not reacting a certain way. ALL of my rage goes to Trip and to all of the people who suspected what was going on and didn't say anything. Not to get all preachy, but seriously, ladies, do not let anyone do this to you. Or gents, too. No one deserves to be abused, and, if you suspect it, do something...carefully.

What made this book work, I think, was definitely Allie's character. In her every word and thought, you can feel the specter of Trip hanging over her head. Memories of him flit constantly through her head, judging her and terrifying her, continuing to hurt her in the only way he now can. His influence on her is so obvious; this is why we can relate to her so well, and feel with her.

Jennifer Shaw Wolf definitely made me tear up. This is a beautifully written book on an incredibly dark topic. If reading about abuse doesn't interest you, there's also a murder mystery. This book is beautiful, as suggested by the title, and excruciating. I highly recommend it to those who like dark YA stories with depth. show less

Allie's small town of Pacific Cliff's is mourning the death of her boyfriend, its golden boy, Trip. Trip died in the accident that sent his truck plunging off the seaside cliff - Allie survived but with no memory of the night or the accident.

Now, as she's recovered enough from her injuries to return to school nearly everyone seems to expect her to miss Trip as much as they do and in the same way. Only, while Allie might not be able to remember the night of the accident - the cotillion dance, show more the drive afterwards - she does remember the abuse she suffered at the hands of Trip. The abuse seemingly no one knew about.

With a new detective in their sleepy town, there to reopen the investigation into Trip's death, will Allie be able to continue to keep her secrets? And will she ever remember what happened the night of the accident?

Will she even want to?

Breaking Beautiful is so much more than a story about a girl who can't remember something. Or a girl with secrets. Jennifer Shaw Wolf's debut is full of complex characters - from Allie to her brother Andrew, her childhood friend Blake, even some of the more minor school friends/foes - who have their own complicated pasts and presents that play into their motivation.

It's a book that doesn't take things lightly and it doesn't let readers into the story lightly. We meet Allie after she's already survived the accident and is struggling with how to remember Trip, her abusive boyfriend who's died rather tragically.

With a military father she's been the new girl all her life, but now they're in her mother's hometown, where everyone knows everyone, something Allie always thought she'd be grateful for. Except that now, with Trip's death, she's seeing the darker side of that. Allie doesn't act the way everyone wants/expects her to and things quickly get very hard for her. The way that Wolf writes this is gripping, painful, and full of tension. While you do, at times, want to tell Allie something to do, there's never a surefire fix.

Her only ray of possible hope is her old friend, Blake. She'd left him behind recently but he seems to still be willing to be there for her. And he was, maybe, the only person in town who didn't love Trip.

Breaking Beautiful's plot packed so much more of a punch (literally and figuratively, I suppose) than I anticipated - I loved it.

A mystery, a romance, as well as a great look at friendship, family relationships and personal struggles, Breaking Beautiful is full of twists and turns right up until the end. You'll feel for the characters - even those you aren't sure have the best intentions - and hope everything turns out okay for all of them. show less

Breaking Beautiful was the first book dealing with abusive relationships that I've read. The subject matter always made me leery, because it could so easily be done incorrectly. But I liked the fact that this book involved a mystery: Allie's boyfriend, Trip, is dead, and Allie can't remember what happened that night. She is automatically looked at with suspicion because she survived and he did not. It doesn't help that Trip is seen as a perfect boyfriend, and was extremely popular in their show more small town. (It also doesn't help that his father is loaded and single-handedly brought tourism back to the town, rejuvenating it.) But the reader - and Allie - are aware of the darker side of Trip: the fact that, when he got angry - which was quite often - he'd take that anger out on Allie. Allie is afraid to say anything, though, because she doesn't want people to know what Trip did, mostly because she fears that they'd never believe her (and that it would just make her look even more guilty regarding his death). Allie spends much of this book afraid: afraid to remember, afraid to tell anyone the truth, afraid of what others think about her. The book encompasses Allie's journey as she tries to move on, and also her growth as a character.

One other thing I loved about this book was Allie's relationship with her twin brother, Andrew, who has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair. Allie tries so had to protect Andrew, because she feels like he isn't as strong as she is, but in truth it was Andrew who was the strongest character in the story. I loved seeing their little talks, the flashbacks to when he tried to help her with Trip, and just their little day-to-day conversations and the way they lived their lives and interacted with each other. This was a really great sibling relationship, and was probably one of the strengths of the book. I also thoroughly enjoyed Blake, and the way we got to see what his and Allie's relationship looked like prior to her meeting Trip. I also loved the fact that, to Blake, Andrew was just another person and wasn't anything strange or different because of his disability (and I ADORED Caitlyn, the girl Andrew starts dating during the book). Blake was such a great character: fully developed, with interesting an interesting back story, who's dealing with a number of things that no one knows about. He's aware of what others think about him, and doesn't care. The only person he cares about is Allie, and I give him so much credit for never giving up on her, even when she treated him horribly. I liked the slow development of his relationship with her, his little insights into what she's thinking, and how he just really cared about her from the very beginning. Their relationship was so well-developed that by the time they were "together" it was just perfect, including Allie's insecurities and worries about what the relationship might imply to others.

The abuse was dealt with in a really realistic way: you see the flashbacks to what Trip did to Allie (aside from the accident that killed him), you hear her inner monologues in which she puts herself down, and you see her reactions when people raise a hand to her (even if they're not going to hit her), or get angry with her. Her whole personality screams, "I've been abused," and it's kind of amazing that no one realized what was going on. There were so many lines that just really spoke to me: "I glance around out of habit, to see if anyone is watching before I approach [Blake]," (10%), "[Trip would] get mad if I had something to do that didn't involve him," (14%), "With Trip around, I was isolated from the rest of the school, but I was isolated with him for company. Now I'm just alone," (34%). And then there was the box of her mementos that absolutely screamed "this is what an abusive relationship looks like!" You had the apology letters - "I'm sorry, I'll never do it again, please forgive me, I didn't mean it, etc," and the expensive gifts to make up for when he hurt her. You had all the pictures in which she didn't ever really look happy, or looked horribly stressed out. The whole thing just really made me so sad for her, especially her overwhelming fear and the way she'd changed her entire life for this one guy who treated her so badly. And the fact that she believed him when he'd put her down, and how she wouldn't believe Blake when he said something nice about her just really broke my heart.

And throughout all of this, you have the overarching mystery of what happened the night Trip died. Allie is being followed, being given threatening letters, and is really struggling to figure out what happened to her (and is torn about whether she even wants to know what happened). I felt like the mystery was really well done, because I was just as confused as Allie was and had no idea how everything was going to turn out. I just really wanted Allie to find the strength to remember, to free herself from Trip's memory, and to start realizing that she was so much better than he'd wanted her to think she was. And most of all I wanted her to realize just how perfect Blake was for her, and how much he cared for her.

Everything about this book was so well done, and I've gone on about what I liked so much you're probably wondering why I took a star off. The truth is that this book starts kind of slowly; I didn't find myself really engrossed until about 40% into the narrative. But once I hit that point, the book was hard to put down, as I just wanted to know what was going to happen, and what the truth about Trip's death was. I stayed up far too late last night to finish it, because I got to the point where I couldn't stop reading. Even with the darker subject matter, there is a lot of hope in this book, not only hope for Allie to heal, but hope that everything will work out for the best. All in all this was a really fabulous debut novel.

Breaking Beautiful is now available in North America from the bookseller of your choice. I highly recommend you pick up a copy.

An e-galley was provided by the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Quotes taken from an uncorrected e-galley. show less