Re: Made to be Broken
On Fridays, I only have one class: Civil Procedure. So for lunch, instead of grabbing a quick piece of pizza or sub from one of the places around the university, I take the long way home and stop at the mall for lunch. Fridays I need to wind down from a long, stressful week of law school and studying, and it’s the first time in usually five or six days when I don’t have a deadline looming over me. Which means it’s usually the first time in awhile where I have the free time to do what I want to do.
I almost always pick up a book from the Barnes and Noble across the street and head to Chili’s to read it over lunch. Sometimes I take my laptop and catch up on a TV show I missed, or read an e-book, or buy more than one book one week and take the extra with me the next, but one thing is always the same: for the 1-3 hours it takes me to watch the show or read the book, it’s all about a story.
Today, I picked up Kelley Armstrong’s Made to be Broken. For some reason I didn’t think it was due out until March (I may have been confusing it with Carrie Vaughn’s new book), so when I saw it on one of the “new in paperback” kiosk thingies, I was really excited, and even though I’d already picked up Jenna Black’s new The Devil’s Due, I grabbed this book too.
They’re both new books in series that I’ve read, but I’ve been waiting for the sequel to Exit Strategy for aaages, which is a little weird because it’s not my usual genre: that is, I read sci-fi, fantasy, and urban fantasy almost exclusively, and Made to be Broken and Exit Strategy are both straight-up thrillers about a Canadian hitwoman. They’re extremely well-done, though, and the author also writes an excellent paranormal series: Women of the Otherworld.
I really enjoyed Made to be Broken, though I don’t have much to say about it except that I still love how none of the characters are stereotypical in the least, and that the only thing I didn’t like about the book was how the “title phrase” was handled. “Made to be Broken” was what the narrator, Nadia, indicates that people in the towns where certain murdered teens died said about the dead girls — because they were pretty young things who dressed like sluts or what not, they were somehow destined to be abused. The narrator was really bothered by the phrase, emotionally, but what bugged me about it is that it’s not the kind of thing I would ever expect to hear in dialog from small-town people trash-talking a girl they disapproved of — it’s too poetic. As a title, it’s great. But as something I’m supposed to believe people came up with to say, or even what the narrator expected people to say, it didn’t quite pan out for me… so when I saw the title in the text, I was taken out of the story because it felt inserted for the purpose of clarifying the title… and not part of the story itself.
But as far as complaints go, that’s pretty minor, right? Now I just hope that the sales will justify a book three, because Ms. Armstrong is only contracted for two and I really, really, really want to see how the relationships between these characters grow and expand… and I’m equally interested in seeing Nadia come to better understand (and accept) herself.
Filed by Cally at February 27th, 2009 under Tags: chili's, kelley armstrong, made to be broken, review