Reading Beautiful Broken Things struck me on many levels. There were a lot of things I related to her having gone through these myself. I’ve been in Caddy’s shoes. I’ve been in Rosie’s shoes. I’ve had a number of Suzanne’s in my life. I’ve learnt that groups of threes aren’t always the most stable of friend groups. Beautiful Broken Things reminded me of toxic relationships I’ve had, the naïve wishes to be there as a friend unravelled and being pushed aside as I wasn’t included in the plans of two when we should have been three.
Review Anthology #1: Mental Illness
As I browsed through all the titles of books that I read last year, I realized that there were a lot of them that I didn’t share here on the blog (yet). Some of these were books that I thought were fairly important and I always meant to feature.
CLEAN by Amy Reed
Clean is a book that thoroughly surprised me. Firstly, I thought this book would be about mental illness. Actually it’s about addiction. I should’ve realized that before I started reading but as usual, I hardly glanced at the synopsis. Secondly, I was impressed with how the characters were portrayed in terms of depth, development and voice. Best of all, I was amazed by the writing style. It was on the experimental side, which I hadn’t expected.
THE TREATMENT (The Program #2) by Suzanne Young
I can hardly describe the overwhelming disappointment that The Treatment brought me. I know I wasn’t a fan of The Program but I did like it for the concept. Still, I had problems with it because of the many unanswered questions The Program left me with. I pegged them as cliffhangers, so I expected The Treatment answer them, particularly the ones about the suicide epidemic that wrought this society. Did I get those answers? Hardly. The big issues were glossed over so much, I was mad at the end of the book. To me, The Treatment hardly contributed to the duology. It would’ve been better left unread.
THE PROGRAM by Suzanne Young
Suicide as an epidemic and how society deals with it—perfect premise of a work of fiction for a sociology student like me. Perhaps then my opinions on this book are unfair because I am weighing them against my academic background. But I can’t help it; after years of studying sociology, it has come to influence…
