Blog Tour: Breaking Glass by Lisa Amowitz (Review)

About The Author

Lisa Amowitz was born in Queens and raised in the wilds of Long Island, New York where she climbed trees, thought small creatures lived under rocks and studied ant hills. And drew. A lot. When she hit her teens, she realized that Long Island was too small for her and she needed to escape. So she went to college in Pittsburgh. Go figure. On leaving college, Lisa became a graphic designer living in New York City. She eventually married her husband of a zillion years, had two lovely children, and was swept away to a fairy tale life in the Bronx, where, unbelievably there are more trees and wilderness than her hometown. She can see the Hudson River from her kitchen window. Lisa has been a professor of graphic design at her beloved Bronx Community College where she has been tormenting and cajoling students for nearly seventeen years. She started writing eight years ago because she wanted something to illustrate, but somehow, instead ended up writing YA. Probably because her mind is too dark and twisted for small children.

Website / Blog / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads

Review

Title: Breaking Glass
Author: Lisa Amowitz
Publisher: Spencer Hill Press
Released: July 9th 2013
Pages: 297 (Paperback)
Buy: Amazon UK / Amazon US / The Book Depository / B&N
Add on Goodreads

On the night seventeen-year-old Jeremy Glass winds up in the hospital with a broken leg and a blood alcohol level well above the legal limit, his secret crush, Susannah, disappears. When he begins receiving messages from her from beyond the grave, he's not sure whether they're real or if he's losing his grip on reality. Clue by clue, he gets closer to unraveling the mystery, and soon realizes he must discover the truth or become the next victim himself.

I finished this book well over a week ago, yet I'm only just getting around to writing this review. Why? Breaking Glass left me utterly speechless. I don't think I'll ever be able to find words accurate enough to describe just how amazing and suspenseful this book really is.

Jeremy Glass has been in love with his best friend's girlfriend ever since he can remember, though is was never mutual. So why when Susannah disappears is he the one she reaches out to? With a broken leg, an alcohol addiction, and a lack of friends, Jeremy is left to find out what exactly has happened to his crush, and if things will ever be the same again.

Amowitz tackles a range of different subjects in this one book - you have addiction, mental health issues, suicide, disability and LGBT all wrapped up in under 300 pages, so it's safe to say that it's just a little bit intense. However, I kind of liked the intensity - everything was thrown at you so quickly that you barely had time to absorb it before it all came crashing down on top of you, making everything completely overwhelming. It was a risky technique to attempt, but in this case the risk paid off.

I think a confusing aspect of this book was that I didn't like any of the characters particularly, yet I was still able to relate and sympathise with them. I felt nothing but compassion for Jeremy, as he had a ridiculous amount of misfortune thrown at him, and I felt incredibly angry at Susannah for putting him through so much. In a way, it mimicked Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why, except where Asher was just off the mark, Amowitz was spot on. As the reader, you feel Jeremy's pain as if it's your own.

Overall, Breaking Glass is an amazing book, with Amowitz's smooth writing making the read effortless. If you like contemporary, realistic novels with a small paranormal twist, then this book will be right up your street - and if you don't, well, it will still be up your street! I for one will definitely be keeping an eye out for any more books by this talented author - with a debut like this, it can only get better.
Rating: 4/5