A review by strangethedreamer
The Broken Bridge by Philip Pullman

2.0

Unfortunately I don't think that I'm the right audience for this book; I generally stick to genre fiction and tend to veer away from YA coming of age stories. From a technical standpoint, I enjoyed the writing; Pullman's prose in this book reminds me a little of Toni Morrison's work. I was impressed how well Pullman was able to portray a biracial protagonist and the Welsh setting was a welcome change from traditional books of this stripe which are frequently set in the American south. I also was grateful that there was no graphic racial or sexual violence in this book--as I've grown older I find most fictional characterizations of these kinds of violence to be clumsy and I don't have much patience for it. Overall, I found the pacing to be a little slow and never felt fully invested in Ginny's story. I cared enough to get through the book, but not enough for the story to stay with me afterwards. Overall, I think this would make a nice book as an assigned reading in high school, but it is not something I would read for leisure.

Final Verdict: would recommend for high-school students or as a classroom text, but not really for "fun" reading.

*Thank you to Open Road Integrated Media and Netgalley for the ARC of this book's re-release in exchange for my honest review.