Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - Even If We Break

Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

Even If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp

16 reviews

flordemaga's review

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I wanted to rate higher, but couldn’t. The book is a bit slow on the first third, grows considerably stronger in the second third with a tense atmosphere and stakes that feel high, and then… a messy last third with immersion breaking character speak and kind of a boring ending.

Mandy is easily the strongest character, with a unique voice and a good portrait of an autistic character without being infantilizing nor ignoring disability.

The rest of the character voices are, I feel, not distinct enough. Carter is the second most distinct voice. The rest kind of get muddled together.

But what I hate the most: some of the dialogue, especially at the end when it super shouldn’t be, gets preachy and stilted and sounds unbelievable. Like… The author expects me to believe like these traumatized 18 year olds would be speaking like they just got out of their weekly therapy session after they’ve faced Horrors. It’s deeply unrealistic and ridiculous and immersion-breaking as hell. But okay.

It really pissed me off and that with the unclear character voices just really turned me off and I kinda wish I didn’t actually read this one.

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princejello's review

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

The characters' differences and what they struggled with were really interesting to get into. The "plot twist" wasn't much of one, but it was still pretty intense toward the end. I always love to see autistic and trans rep.

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savreads28's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

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rxanne5's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.5

I have re read this book a few times by now. I do love this book a lot.

I'm a huge nerd so it's only natural I'm liking this book so much. It has been a while since I read it again though. There are spoilers ahead!

I love the character building in this book. I like how Marieke Nijkamp builds characters disabled or lgbtq+ people can relate to without it being a huge plot point or something that tries to get 'fixed' throughout the book.

I could also relate to some of the characters. I do like the plot twists in this book, but I had a bad feeling about Liv the whole time already. This is definitely my favorite book if the two I have read by this author and I also got a friend hooked on this.

There are some beautiful quotes in this book, that also made me think for a while. Great book.

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flat221b's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Marieke does it again! Another page-turner for my collection. I simply could not put it down (except for around the climax - I shouldn’t have been reading at night! 😨) It goes between 5 POVs of a friend group who battles struggles internally, within themselves, and within their group. Has a true DND feel to it that I really appreciated!

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