WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW
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| “The quarry had absorbed the girls, delivering them to a place where they would remain untouched by hands, and unbroken by hearts.”- Beautiful Broken Girls, Kim Savage |
Remember the places you touched me.
The parts of Mira Cillo that Ben touched are etched on his soul.
Palm. Hair. Chest. Cheek. Lips. Throat. Heart.
It was the last one that broke her. After her death, Mira sends Ben on a quest for notes she left in the seven places where they touched—notes that explain why she and her sister, Francesca, drowned themselves in the quarry. How Ben interprets those notes has everything to do with the way he was touched by a bad coach years before. But the truth behind the girls’ suicides is far more complicated, involving a dangerous infatuation, a deadly miracle, and a crushing lie.
Why I continue to read YA mysteries Lord only knows. Maybe it's because I'm loyal to a fault and would rather blame the bad streak I've had with YA mysteries on my own bad picks rather than on the genre itself.
Such was the case with Beautiful Broken Girls. The eeriness of the cover made this book pop to me, and I was drawn to it the minute I stepped into the library. Even if it kind of looks like she's bathing in milk.
It was fine at first. The introduction reminded me of Deep and Dark and Dangerous, a children's ghost/baby horror story I loved when I was a little one. But there was something that didn't feel right to me. I had a hard time concentrating and really getting into the story. I felt like that from the very first page I should have been immediately drawn in and intrigued by the story, but I had a hard time connecting. There was nothing wrong with the plot- in fact, the plot had a lot of promise, and the characters were mildly intriguing, so I placed my lack of engrossment down to the writing. At first, I couldn't pinpoint what was wrong with the writing, just that it didn't really work, but as I read on the flaws became more apparent. The writing is both flowery and disjointed, really amplifying the messiness of the plot and making me think that Kim Savage bit off a little more than she could chew tackling this novel. There were tons of adverbs and adjectives that didn't work well- I wrote down two examples: "called crustily" and "hated...keenly" that stuck out to me in particular- and I had no real emotional attachment to the characters. I felt as if I was a faceless audience member, looking on with cool passivity at everything that happened in this book. The two words that kept sticking in my head were detached and uninterested. I couldn't hate the two sisters or emphasize with Ben the way I was supposed to because they couldn't get any emotion out of me. It didn't feel haunting, just hollow.
The dialogue was also unrealistic. I was amazed by how little the characters in this book acted like people. For instance, at one point one of the characters described Ben as "the kind of kid a pedophile might like". Who in the hell describes people like that? Frankly, it seemed like even the characters were as uninterested as I was about the situation they were in. And so many dramatic things happened in this book that I just stopped caring. The magical realism elements came out of nowhere, and made me think of The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender. However, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender is by far the superior novel. There were some glimmers of a good story, and I liked some elements, such as the Catholic theology and ritual bits, and I loved that it focused on Italian Americans. There aren't many YA novels that follow Italian Americans, and though I'm not my area is probably 85-90% Italian. Still, I'm a bit disappointed with some of Savage's decisions in her portrayal of Italian Americans, like Mr Falso who reads like a Guido stereotype. There's also a strange scene when Ben notes Mr Falso's cross necklace, commenting that it looks like something another character's brother would wear clubbing. Kind of strange, especially since almost all the Italian American guys I know wear crucifixes themselves. Not really a big deal. Mira's also not an Italian name, but whatever.
There's quite a few heavy handed symbols, like Mr Falso's name being, well, Falso. Even if you didn't know Italian, that's a cognate. The other is the fairly obvious Christ metaphor with the holes in Francesca's palms. Both are delivered with all the subtlety of a brick to the head.
I was also disappointed with the way the child sexual abuse of Ben was treated. It was merely a plot device, meant to make him seem "broken". It makes me sad that the stories of male victims never seem to be treated with the same care and compassion that the stories of female victims are. I wish boys had as many books to read and relate to as girls do when it comes to that subject.
Overall, when I think about this book one word sticks in my head. Underwhelming. Which is a shame, because I wanted to love this book, I really did. But if you are looking for a mystery, you'll be sorely disappointed. This isn't a thriller as much as it is a contemporary. If you loved The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender you might like this one too, but I don't know. Perhaps I should have read The Virgin Suicides before this book. Maybe then I would have appreciated it more.
4.5-5 out of 10
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