“The problem with fairy tales isn't that they don't exist. It's that they do exist, but only for some people.” ― Summer Marks.
Once upon a time, a girl went into a bookshop and walked through its shelves, looking but not looking for any specific book, until she heard the music of words, their gravity, the power they have to guide someone to a really good place, person or thing. This time, it was a book, and it was calling her. This book took the girl to another place in this same world we live in, but what she was reading was not real —luckily, she thought—, because it was about a murder… a really scary murder.
So that’s what happened to me, my real self, when I found Broken Things in the bookshop. I was sceptical about buying it, because I’d read another book by Lauren Oliver before and I didn’t enjoyed it too much. But I was craving a good thriller or a mystery story and the temptation was too strong. And honestly, I am glad I got it.
Mia, Summer and Brynn had two lives, one in the real world and the other one in the magic world of Lovelorn. But when Summer decides it’s time to end the game none of the girls talk about going back to Lovelorn ever again, until Summer comes back to Mia and Brynn and tells them that is time to finish the story completely. Which involves a sacrifice. None of them could imagine it would end up like that.
This book took me back to The Chronicles of Narnia, it made me walk through the wardrobe with Lucy, feel the snow falling to my cheeks, meeting Mr. Tumnus and the rest of the creatures in Narnia. But it also made me thing about the cons of fantasy. You can fall in love with a story —with a world that doesn’t exist— so deep that you end up believing it does exist, getting obsessed with it. Surely, fiction and fantasy can evade you from the real world, but you can’t forget where and who you are, you should not confuse the two worlds, the real one and the fictional. It’s scary how a story can go too far in a child’s mind.
Lauren Oliver has created a truly meaningful story, from which you can spend a good time and learn how people should not take fantasy so lightly. The good plot and the depth of the characters are two of the best things in this intriguing novel.
**spoiler alert**
I loved the end. The whole book talks about The Way to Lovelorn and its unfinished ending, and Oliver took advantage of it and ended her own book mid-sentence. This is wonderful, if I ever wrote a book I’d end it like that too.
