Normally, I do not look for books with more than one author, but Break to You publicity had an intriguing topic for me – two teens in juvenile detention. Break to You has three authors: Neal Shusterman, Debra Young, and Michelle Knowlden. As a writer, I can’t figure out how you even write with one other person, much less two, but these three have figured it out.
Adriana has seven months to hang in there at the detention center before returning to a dysfunctional family – a distant father, a stepmother who is trying too hard, and a toddler stepbrother who is the only family member with whom she has a loving relationship. Jon, who has already been at the center for years, has a family backstory that put him there and gains the reader’s sympathy. Touted as a modern detention center, flaws in the system show up quickly.
Happenstance puts Adriana in the library as her work assignment and sets up the accidental leaving of her journal that will become a connection with Jon even in a center where the boys and girls never meet up. Teenage and adult secondary characters are well defined with believable characteristics.
The three authors worked seamlessly to produce a story with tension that kept me turning pages and rooting for both Adriana and Jon as well as several of the secondary characters, especially the foster child who has no reason to be there except that there is nowhere else for him to go.
While this is written especially for middle graders, anyone who cares about redemption of young people who, at worst, have made bad choices in friends, places to be, and spur of the moment decisions will find it a good read. I read it in an ARC from Net Galley, but it goes on public sale today.