ONLY LOVE CAN BREAK YOUR HEART | Katherine Webber

◮ I don`t think love should be an escape. And I don`t think it should be about power either. I think love should make you stronger. A better person, not a worse one. ◭

  ~ INFO ~

Title: Only love can break your heart

Author: Katherine Webber

Publisher: Walker Books

Price:   paperback £7,99

           

Plot:  Sometimes a broken heart is all you need to set you free… Reiko loves the endless sky and electric colours of the Californian desert. It is a refuge from an increasingly claustrophobic life of family pressures and her own secrets. Then she meets Seth, a boy who shares a love of the desert and her yearning for a different kind of life. But Reiko and Seth both want something the other can't give them. As summer ends, things begin to fall apart. But the end of love can sometimes be the beginning of you...

~My Wandering Thoughts ~

WARNING: This review is going to be all over the place. I just find it very difficult to review books that I loved.

There are cases in which you want to read a book for the beautiful cover, others because of the author and others because the plot is intriguing. In this case, for me, it`s the title. I don`t know why precisely, it just gave me this feeling of sadness and loneliness, and I was very excited to read it, even those books that romanticise this kind of things BUT I am so happy to tell you that I was so, so, so wrong for once. I`m not going to go into details because I don`t want to spoil anything but OMG this book is a real pearl. 

though I don`t usually go for contemporary as much as fantasy. As soon as I started reading it the feelings that the title gave me, came in full force thanks to the majestic writing of Katherine and the way the story is narrated. Don`t let the beginning fool you though, because as soon as I started it, I was like "Oh, here we go, a character with problems that are magically solved by finding the love of her life, yes, very realistic" and that it was, you know, one of

It`s one of those books that you want to read slowly to savour each word and sentence but at the same time, you can`t wait to see how it ends. Where do I start? Let`s begin with the characters. The thing that I love most in Katherine Webber`s book is the diversity, and I think it`s very important to have diversity, especially in YA where teenagers can feel represented and emphasize with the different characters in books. To be honest, the majority of the characters feel a teeny tiny bit stereotyped, for example, we have Reiko which is the classic perfect Asian girl, or the inevitable mean girl, but I didn`t really mind these imperfections just because the development of Reiko`s character was done extremely well. I don`t really want to go deeper and analyse every single character as I normally do because I want to leave it to you to find out about them (just know that I was swinging form pity to hate and back again with our boy Seth). 

I liked how Reiko`s depression was portrayed and how she eventually copes with it, I think that`s my favourite thing in the book because it`s not romanticised or anything and you can really see her struggle, and that can be displayed in her being mean or an outright bitch sometimes, but I think it doesn`t, but just pretend it makes sense.

that only the ones who have been through that can really understand and appreciate her behaviour and development, because she`s not an easy character at all and often it`s not easy to like her but this makes Reiko more...real to me, if that makes any sense

She`s sometimes selfish or manipulative but she is also overridden by guilt and we see that she`s just a girl, with a broken heart, and the sadness and anger and guilt and you feel it amplified from the way the author narrates the story, with a writing that is delicate and just...right for the story, without being too heavy with useless descriptions. The setting of the story is also very peculiar because is set near the desert and there are vivid descriptions of Reiko`s and Seth`s adventures in the desert and I just find it very interesting since I`ve never been to a desert and I`m just not attracted to places like that. 

It`s a very bittersweet story and it`s also one of the few books that made me cry so much I had to stop for a moment and wipe away the tears at 4 am. The struggle is real. 

This has become one of my favourites book and every time I think about it, my heart smiles. 

☆ 4.90 ☆

I have nothing else to say except:"READ THIS BOOK YOU WON`T REGRET IT!"

Happy Reading! xxx

Nora A.