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Review: Things That Were Broken (Everything That Dies, Book 1) By Will Tyler
Before I get into today’s review, some trigger warnings are a must. This book contains multiple graphic depictions of suicide, self harm, rape, conversion therapy, and child abuse. This read is not for the faint of heart.
Michael and Leah run an interpretive dance class at their local youth centre. One night, they get a message from one of the classes’ attendees, Cameron, who is on the verge of suicide. Michael and Leah go after Cameron in the hopes of talking him down from his suicide attempt, and reminding why life is worth living. Cue the rest of the book.
First of all, I understand why this book was written. The author has a very deep understanding of religious trauma, especially religious trauma stemming from sexual abuse and conversion therapy, and the individual traumas of the characters were things that many people who faced religious trauma will be able to relate to. The subject matter is handled with grace and sensitivity, which I think that many people will appreciate. However, the book just wasn’t for me. I found myself repeatedly skipping pages because the constant vivid descriptions of the characters’ trauma were too much for my taste. All of the characters had a never-ending trauma conga line, and there was nothing to balance it out, and the emotional impact that their trauma should have had on me just wasn’t there because of it. The characters felt one-dimensional, and like their only defining features were their respective traumas, and their dance group. I understand that these things happen in real life, but this is fiction, and I would have preferred to see the characters properly fleshed out so that I could care more about them, and in turn, care about their traumas. I’m also confused as to when this book takes place—It was released in 2021, but the characters use flip phones and communicate in text speak with them, which seems to suggest that the setting of the book is in the early 2000s.
I know that this book will be extremely important to people, especially those with religious trauma, but it wasn’t for me, and I will not be reading any more books in this series. If you’d like to check it out for yourself, however, you can find it below on Goodreads, where you can be redirected to the right Amazon page for your country:
