BOOK review for Breaking Beautiful by Jennifer Shaw Wolf

TITLE:        Breaking Beautiful

AUTHOR:  Jennifer Shaw Wolf

GENRE:     YA

RATING;   4 stars

I have such mixed emotions about this book.

The writing was excellent and the story line engaged me completely.  The subject matter was a rough one, but the author did a great job of balancing sensitivity, while not shedding (too much) away from the truth about this type of situation.

My problem was with the main character Allie.  At first, she is an interesting character that I fully stood behind, but as the story moved on and Allie, somehow did not, it just got annoying, annoying, annoying.  How many times could this character rub her stone for security, while keeping everything bottled up inside. 

It went on way too long.  I cannot tell you how many times, I rolled my eyes when Allie, once again, swallowed her words and crawled inside herself.

There were some aspects missing from this story, i.e. counselling and support - it is never mentioned at all.  Of course, the fact that Allie is the only one who knows what happened and chooses not to say anything, precludes counselling, although I was not a huge fan of her parents, so who knows what they would have said, even if they knew.

I sound like I did not like this book, but to the contrary, I really did, I wish the main character had been written with inner strength or at least, a desire to move through this event.