Novel Review: Breakaway by Kat Spears

Rating (Out of 5): ~3.5

Genre: YA Realistic

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Release Date: September 15, 2015

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Teaser Tuesday.

Goodreads Synopsis:

From Kat Spears, author of Sway, comes a new novel that asks the question: when a group of four best friends begin to drift apart, what will it take to bring them back together?

When Jason Marshall's younger sister dies, he knows he can count on his three best friends and soccer teammates — Mario, Jordie, and Chick — to be there for him. With a grief-crippled mother and a father who's not in the picture, he needs them more than ever. But when Mario starts hanging out with a rough group of friends and Jordie finally lands the girl of his dreams, Jason is left to fend for himself while maintaining a strained relationship with troubled and quiet Chick. Then Jason meets Raine, a girl he thinks is out of his league but who sees him for everything he wants to be, and he finds himself pulled between building a healthy and stable relationship with a girl he might be falling in love with, grieving for his sister, and trying to hold onto the friendships he has always relied on.

A witty and emotionally moving tale of friendship, first love, and loss, Breakaway is Kat Spears at her finest.

The Cover:

I like this cover, and I like that it goes with the cover on Sway. While I think that it works for the romance aspect of the book, but I don't think that it really shows the most important aspect of the book.

Review:

I really enjoyed Spears’ previous book, a lot, and I expected this book to be a little dark. I didn’t really expect it to be this bad, though.

Jason’s sister dies, and in the year following, he starts falling out with his friends. Jordie gets a girlfriend and starts hanging out with his rich friends. Mario starts hanging out with his druggie friends. And when Jason gets a girlfriend, he starts ignoring Chick.

I liked Raine, and I liked her relationship with Jason. They were nice together, and I liked being in Jason’s head to see his feelings about her. It was a slow romance, but one that Jason thought about a lot, and it was in a good spot by the end.

Another relationship I enjoyed was Jason and Chris’s. I won’t spoil it, although I’d figured it out way before it was officially revealed, but I liked the way Chris was there for Jason, and where they were by the end of the book.

And given how much attention the romance got, even with the hints, I didn’t expect the plot point that happened at the end. I’m not going to spoil it, and maybe I should have seen it coming more than I did, but it made sense, in a sad way. And the ending just left me depressed, honestly.

That whole plot made me depressed at the end, and I wasn’t particularly happy about that. And it reminded me of one of those tragic, depressing school-boy stories you read early in high school. With similarities between the beginning and the end, all this meandering and slow, everyday life chapters, filled with thoughts.

This book left me depressed more than anything, and I’ll be more wary reading her next book.

A review copy was provided by the publisher, St. Martin’s Press. Thank you!