Review: Break by Hannah Moskowitz

     

Break by Hannah Moskowitz
______________________________

Pages: 262
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: August 25th, 2009
IBSN: 9781416982753

Jonah is on a mission to break every bone in his body. Everyone knows that broken bones grow back stronger than they were before. And Jonah wants to be stronger—needs to be stronger—because everything around him is falling apart. Breaking, and then healing, is Jonah’s only way to cope with the stresses of home, girls, and the world on his shoulders.

When Jonah's self-destructive spiral accelerates and he hits rock bottom, will he find true strength or surrender to his breaking point?

Jonah believes that the family is the smallest unit of measurement. He and his brothers and his parents aren't components of a family, in that they can't be split apart from the family. With a brother deathly allergic to pretty much everything, including their newborn brother, and parents constantly at odds, Jonah decides he needs to be stronger in order for the family to be stronger.

So begins Jonah's mission to break his bones and have them heal stronger. No, it isn't as pointlessly self-destructive as it sounds. It started with a car accident that broke both femurs, and evolved to intentionally taking a few fingers, a wrist, a rib. "The first feeling is pain...the feeling that never comes in regret."

Break appeared on my radar after I read the wonderful Invincible Summer, Hannah Moskowitz's sophomore novel. Going back to her debut of two years prior, I was worried that IS set me up for disappointment, but while I could see how Hannah's writing developed between the two, Break was still an highly emotional and enjoyable read.

Hannah Moskowitz's style is raw and arresting, adopting a common family setting teeming with stress and worry and love and pulling it off with the believability of someone who's been there. The dynamics are so realistic and touching. The bond between Jonah and Jesse especially, both constructive and destructive at the same time, felt so real, and the exploration at their impact on each other's lives felt so deeply personal that remembering them as fictional characters came as a shock.

The characters' conflicts and motivations, the dynamics between them, their situations: everything is realistic and gritty. Hannah Moskowitz is skilled in bringing to life the most difficult and complicated of relationships and characters and making them relatable.

Break is a powerful and personal contemporary family drama I'd recommend to fans of Courtney Summers' novels. It's one lovers of Invincible Summer should check out to help pass the time until Gone, Gone, Gone's April release.

Review: Invincible Summer by Hannah Moskowitz

Invincible Summer by Hannah Moskowitz

Pages: 269
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: April 19th, 2011
IBSN: 9781442407510

Noah's happier than I've seen him in months. So I'd be an awful brother to get in the way of that. It's not like I have some relationship with Melinda. It was just a kiss. Am I going to ruin Noah's happiness because of a kiss?

Across four sun-kissed, drama-drenched summers at his family's beach house, Chase is falling in love, falling in lust, and trying to keep his life from falling apart. But some girls are addictive.... 

I'd read enough about this book to know it wasn't a 'typical beach read' but apparently I didn't fully believe that, given how blown away I was by how completely and crazily emotional and decidedly non-beachy Invincible Summer was.

Stories about family bonds aren't usually my thing but this book was totally my thing.

The family dynamic set out in Invincible Summer -- two ever-arguing parents, a deaf younger brother, an outspoken pre-teen sister, another sister on the way, an older brother who runs more than he stays, and our protagonist, Chase -- was incredibly well-developed and realistic. While it was heartwrenching to watch the bonds between them be tested, I so wanted to be a part of the McGill family to feel the intense love the share first-hand (though I doubt in that position I could feel much more strongly for the characters than I did through reading).

The emotions in Invincible Summer were raw and complex; they didn't just affect the characters, but they reached out and latched onto me. I experienced the character's roller coaster of emotions alongside them.

The characters were all incredibly well fleshed-out and realistic. They felt so real that turning the final page, I felt like I was losing friends. Chase's voice was so poignant and sad that I just wanted to give him a hug. Gideon was adorable and easy to love. I identified a lot with Noah, my favourite character in the novel.

The best thing about Invincible Summer, though, is the quasi-love triangle between Chase and Noah and Melinda. It wasn't sweet and built on raw, instant attraction but on need. It wasn't about making the reader swoon, but about making the reader understand the characters and what they've been through and what that means now.

An incredibly emotional story of family told in raw prose. A must-read for contemporary fans.


I give Invincible Summer at 6 out of 5!