Book Review: Broken

I stepped outside my comfort zone, once again, to try a book that usually is not my cup of tea...what resulted was confusing...neither good nor bad...

Broken

Elizabeth Pulford

Told between alternating points of view and part graphic novel, this story is about a teenage girl Zara, in Australia.  Zara was the girl that was abducted at 7.  Thank God she escaped, but tragedy seems to follow her.  When she takes a ride with her brother, Jem, on his newly fixed motorcycle, the two are in an accident, killing Jem, the only person that knew everything about Zara's abduction and Zara's most favorite person on the planet.  Zara is knocked into a coma for months, and it is here the story takes place.  Zara is stuck in a coma but can hear the conversation around her...at the same time, she falls deep into her subconscious to try to find Jem, but along the way, her mind creates the monsters and people from Jem's favorite comic book.  They delay Zara's quest, and at the end of the day, Zara must face the truth about her past to find her brother.

To begin, this book has a LOT going on.  Not only do we jump back and forth in time, we also jump into Zara's mind and into the hospital room as her family and friends try to talk to her.  This can get VERY confusing, but the author does a fairly decent job at changing the fonts and creating comic book illustrations for the different parts, consistently.  The graphic/comic book portions of the story didn't seem all the important to me as a reader, BUT, I did get that it was supposed to be Zara's link to Jem because Jem LOVES a particular comic and Zara believes if she draws in her subconscious these comics, it might draw her closer to Jem.  I actually wouldn't have minded if there had been MORE comics to add to the quest, but alas, there was not.

The idea of this story is a gut-wrenching one.  Zara goes through a horrible kidnapping at a young age...one she represses for years and years, and it takes this accident, a coma, and her quest for her brother to finally come to terms with it.  The connection between the accident and the kidnapping seems a little strained, but again, I understand what the author was trying to do, and thus, I was able to appreciate the story as a whole. 

This book is not for the light-hearted.  It WILL make you think and challenge your focus.  If you think you can handle that, then get this book!