Book Review: Breakaway by Kat Spears

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Breakaway
Author: Kat Spears
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary
Released: September 15th 2015
th Review Source: St. Martin's Griffin

From Kat Spears, author of Sway, comes a new novel that asks the question: when a group of four best friends begin to drift apart, what will it take to bring them back together?

When Jason Marshall's younger sister dies, he knows he can count on his three best friends and soccer teammates — Mario, Jordie, and Chick — to be there for him. With a grief-crippled mother and a father who's not in the picture, he needs them more than ever. But when Mario starts hanging out with a rough group of friends and Jordie finally lands the girl of his dreams, Jason is left to fend for himself while maintaining a strained relationship with troubled and quiet Chick. Then Jason meets Raine, a girl he thinks is out of his league but who sees him for everything he wants to be, and he finds himself pulled between building a healthy and stable relationship with a girl he might be falling in love with, grieving for his sister, and trying to hold onto the friendships he has always relied on. >br />
A witty and emotionally moving tale of friendship, first love, and loss, Breakaway is Kat Spears at her finest.

Man, I am truly so upset I didn’t enjoy Breakaway as much as I was hoping to. Last year I read Sway by Kat Spears and loved it so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this book, but unfortunately I just couldn’t connect with it.

We first meet Jason and his group of friends after his sister’s funeral, the last time the group of friends were together in a peaceful matter even if the circumstance was not ideal. Right off the bat friends start drifting away, Mario gets himself mixed into the wrong crowd, doing drugs, which is nothing Jason wants to be around. Jordie finally lands himself a date with a girl he’s been secretly crushing on, which leads him making her a priority. So then it just leaves us with Jason and Chick, Chick aka Walter, is the “odd” man out and Jason makes it clear that he feels sorry for him, he’s sickly, short, skinny, and just not good with words especially around the female population. The story is focused on Jason and his life after his sister’s death and his friends finding themselves back together.

I just wasn’t feeling Jason. I thought he was generally not a nice person, a real jerk. He’d give his friends flack for doing/not doing something, when he was just as guilty as they were. So while I couldn’t connect with Jason I inadvertently ended up not caring about those around him either, other than Chick. The kid who actually seemed to care about what happened to his friends and the friendship they all shared together.

Though I may not have enjoyed the story much, I did enjoy Kat Spears’ writing and her way of getting into a teenage boy’s head, she was still able to keep me invested enough to find out how the story ends.  And this will definitely not deter me from reading more from Spears.