#BlogTour ‘Even If We Break’ by Marieke Nijkamp

About the book…

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Marieke Nijkamp comes a shocking new thriller about a group of friends tied together by a game and the deadly weekend that tears them apart.

FIVE friends go to a cabin.
FOUR of them are hiding secrets.
THREE years of history bind them.
TWO are doomed from the start.
ONE person wants to end this.
NO ONE IS SAFE.

Are you ready to play?

‘Even If We Break’ is out on September 15th from Sourcebooks, and I am delighted to be bringing you my thoughts courtesy of the blogtour invite from Midas PR.

”This world is a messed up and scary place.It’s lonely to go through it on your own.So,you have to find your family.You have to find people who will stand by you and make you laugh until you cry and who will hold you while you cry till you laugh again.”

From the very start, Marieke has you in her grip as she throws you into her story into this group of friends who make their uneasy way up to an isolated cabin, on a make or break trip.

All 5 of these teens find solace and comfort in the made up world of Gonfalon,a role playing game where they abilities which ‘cripple’ or isolate them in the real world, are celebrated and brought to the fore.

Each of them has facets to their characters which set them apart from a ‘normal’ society-this could be due to gender identity, not being neurotypical or suffering from a disability. These are all things which set them apart, yet in each other they have found a place where they can be honest and open about who and what they are without recrimination.

Except….as the book opens it is clear that a divisive incident has happened and , as the teens make their way to the cabin owned by Liva’s family, they are on literal and metaphorical precipes as they prepare to make life changing decisions. These might range from speaking their truth to making choices on colleges-or even taking back the choices they made together to study in the same place.

It is clear that this is a make or break weekend for them as a group, and as time passess and the game gets under way, there are certain issues which need to be brought to the surface. Whether all 5 get back down from the mountain, however, is suddenly up for debate, by one of the team who has decided to force the others hands.

This is a great novel for teens who are discovering their voices to read, it covers a variety of representation that is not common enough in YA books, but at the same time, panders to several stereotypes. That these 5, due to their outcast nature have banded together, should be entirely natural, but even amongst this niche group of inidividuals, they cannot accept each other as who they are.

Their privilege is on display from the moment Liva mentions using her father’s credit card to redecorate the cabin,as a result I felt pushed out of the story-whilst recognising that I am absolutely not the target audience, this is a criticism I would level at quite a lot of YA books where people just up and go for a week/weekend to the middle of nowhere without ever anticipating things going wrong. Have characters in books never seen/read about camping trips gone wrong?

It is clear there are divisions even amongst this small group, and whilst I get that they have one last opportunity to be together, it felt to me like the author set out to write a book embracing diversity, and ended up with a conforming novel that bought into murder mystery tropes. The characters were bent to accomodate the guidelines set out for them, which made the story feel a bit forced and stilted. It meant that the tension which should have been built from the anticipation of their trip and clearing the air, was stripped of its intensity. As a result, this reader found their enjoyment of ‘Even If We Break’ was continually reduced as the characters became, for want of a better word, tedious.

Admiration abounds for what Marieke Nijkamp is doing with her work , especially as she is writing one of the characters from an own voices perspective and this can only be a good thing. Her characters are complex and multifaceted and as a teen, I absolutely would have loved and been behind what she is doing. As an adult, I rather think the point has been lost on me, to a certain extent. I came to this book with an open mind, after reading and loving books by Karen McManus,Holly Jackson and Courtney Summers. But here, these kids seemed as prepared to break each other down, even to death, causing the same damage that mainstream, straight, neurotypical characters would have done. This is completely on me, as I say, I am not the target audience and feel sure that this will be snapped up by those it is aimed at!

About the author…

Marieke Nijkamp is the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of This Is Where It Ends. She is a storyteller, dreamer, globe-trotter, and geek. She currently resides in her home country, the Netherlands.

Links-http://www.mariekenijkamp.com/

Twitter-

@Midaspr @sourcebooks @mariekyn