I feel that authors should have this mantra running in their heads when attempting lyrical prose or any prose that attempts to be poetic: less is more.Well, that is one of them anyway. While Broken did not lead the terrible assault on my senses as Mafi’s Shatter Me did, it came close. The trouble with poetic prose is that it must be used sparingly in order to have the most impact – I am learning this lesson myself as I study writing. However, poetry does not give a writer the right to string together metaphors that make no sense when analyzed. Metaphors, similes etc are present for a reason other than just to look pretty. I think that many recent authors who attempt this style tend to forget this. When you study literature, read the poetry of the olden times, try Alexander Pope or John Donne (who is my personal favourite). Read Shakespeare. Their rhetoric is brilliant and gorgeous but more than the superficial beauty of the words strung together, it is the meanings held within these words that elevate these poets to the status of masters of their periods.So stuff like windows hurling themselves may sound pretty but do not hold up to further thought. If I were to give my professional opinion on this novel, I would say it seemed like the first draft of a potentially interesting novel. This novel needs work in the pacing as well as the writing. Ignoring the technical bits, the most detrimental to this novel is its unnecessarily slow pace. There are characters whose roles are limited but who keep on making appearances just to bolster the main characters’ appeal. The locker deal? Been there, done that. Move on. Then there is the pathos, oh the pathos, kill me dead and gone. The most ridiculous of everything is Emma’s insistence on hanging around a cemetery when her dead boyfriend doesn’t even have a grave. She talks about how much she wishes there was a grave…and I wasn’t convinced. I have read other books that depict grief in a very raw form and there was never any need for a grave – just the sense of loss that is prominent in everything the grieving character does, from breathing to eating to existing.The slut-shaming is also prominent in this novel. The stereotyping and blanket assumptions of a girls’ sexuality turned me off further. The novel does pick up its pace in the last stretch but by then it was too late. My attention had been truly lost and I was reading more for the sake of getting it over with than any desire to find out what happened to Emma. This novel was most certainly not for me. I don’t know how younger readers may feel about it but I wasn’t enamored.
