Elizabeth Pulford

Representation: N/A?
Trigger warnings: Grief and loss depiction, death of a grandmother, death of a brother, motorbike crash
Read this review for context. This review can also be found on The StoryGraph.
Score: Four points out of ten.

After reading an underwhelming realistic book I was hoping that I would enjoy this one, I didn't and turns out as you've guessed by the rating of this, it's even worse than the last one, I had so many issues and could not like this book at all, where do I even begin. It starts off with the main character Zara Wilson who was on a motorbike with her brother Jem when he crashed into a tree to avoid a toddler, killing him and knocking Zara out and there's the first problems: the beginning of this is similar to the last book and it suffers from the same issues, "sighs". Soon enough I find myself inside Zara's subconscious and then she goes into a comic??? I don't get it since this would be a more fantasy aspect but the library put this wrongly I might add into the realistic section. In the comic, she is all alone at first but then there are some other characters like Trace, Jem, Dark Eagle and the antagonist Morven and all of them I just couldn't connect to which was tantamount to the last book. She is in this world for quite a while when the story just confuses me, it switches between not one, not two, but three points of view which are Zara's, Zara in the past and the outside world which was hard to wrap my head around. In the end, I think Zara leaves the comic and recovers ending this on a high note.… (altro)

"Broken" is an interesting and uniquely presented book about Zara who has to accept her past before she can accept the future. Zara remains in a coma after a motorbike accident which kills her brother. While she can hear her family and friends talking to her, pleading that she return to them, she finds herself in her brother's favourtie comic, looking for Jem. The book is a mixture of story, scraps of newspaper articles, flashbacks and comic illustrations, but it is difficult to really empathise with Zara who remains unconscious until the very end. In fact my favourite character is probably Zara's out-spoken, gutsy best friend, Trace.… (altro)