Review: Heart-wrenching, beautifully written novel
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 11, 2014
Favorite Quote(s):“‘We all have moments we wish we could take back,’ I said. ‘Our actions may change the course of somebody’s life, without us even realizing it.’”Favorite Character: Quinn.First Line:“‘Daddy, please. I…I need to see Christopher,’ I sobbed. ‘I need to be with him.’”My Musings: Before You Break is the companion novel to All of You by Christina Lee. Before You Break follows Avery’s best friend and roommate Ella as she struggles with her grief over her late brother’s suicide, while also helping TSU baseball player Daniel Quinn overcome the grief that he feels from losing his best friend in a car accident.Before You Break was a much deeper, more profound novel that All of You. Before You Break deals with some pretty heavy stuff that left my heart bleeding. What I liked about this novel is that the male lead was the one who was broken the most. Don’t get me wrong, Ella had a few struggles of her own, but she was the rock of this novel and their relationship. But seeing the guilt and the grief that Quinn was facing was enlightening to me in regards with the way people think and the way that people grieve. It was hard to read at times, the feeling were so overwhelming. But I believe that is what made this novel stand out.“She was funny, smart, and passionate. I’d never felt this for someone in my life—a girl I could truly talk to and fell comfortable with, regardless of our crazy chemistry.”Ella, at the beginning of the novel, just wanted to be closer to her late brother. She did this through dating Joel, a guy who was her brother’s soccer coach, regardless of the warning signs that he didn’t really value her. Enter Quinn and Daniel. Ella worked at a suicide prevention hotline for her major in psychology, so when she gets a call from a distraught young man suffering with intensive guilt over his late best friend, she couldn’t help but relate. I immensely enjoyed Ella’s character. She was strong willed, determined, and caring. She was a wonderful character to read.“‘Neither one of us will ever know if our actions would have produced a different result. Or maybe delayed the inevitable,’ I said. ‘We’ll never know. And we need to learn how to live with that.’”Now the real shining star of this novel was Daniel Quinn. Quinn suffered with blaming himself for his best friend’s death, and lived his life in order to make up for it. But along with this came depression and feelings of worthlessness. So one bad day, Quinn calls the suicide prevention hotline in need of someone to talk to, and is struck by the anonymous Gabriella, who he has no problem opening up to. On the flip side, and unbeknownst to him, he is getting closer with Gabriella, or Ella as she went by in life, of a whole different level. I loved how broken Quinn was. I showed that even guys can feel things like depression and contemplate thoughts like suicide. It was a real eye opener to see this from a guy’s perspective ,especially because that doesn’t happen much in novels. Regardless of the problems Quinn went through, he was still an amazing character. He was sweet, caring, and protective, and he was just an all around greatly developed character. I wish that we got to see more of him.“My chest also ached with an insurmountable guilt. I’d been thinking about offing myself forever and here this girl had someone close to her who had actually done it. In the most fundamental sense, the most basic of truths, we had something in common. Grief, sorrow, pain. We both knew what if felt like to lose someone we loved.”Ella and Quinn together were amazing. Not only did they connect on the physical, but also on the purely emotional, which is evident though their conversations when they didn’t know that it was each other. That made the chemistry between them that much greater. It was a unique concept of romance that Lee came up with, an innovate type that stuck out among the dull and common romances that are out there.“I was the sweet, cute, good girl. Never gorgeous. Beautiful. Sexy. But with Quinn, this reckless part of me had transformed into this vixen I had only ever dreamt of becoming.”Before You Break was a heart-wrenching, beautifully written novel about flawed characters trying to learn to live life and let go. With a much deeper meaning and the ability to evoke thoughts that scratch more than the surface, it’s a novel that I recommend if you don’t mind feeling emotions.