Break

3 Stars - I was drawn to this story because of the idea of a teenage boy who goes out of his way to try to break every bone in his body. I wanted to know just what was behind this idea, why someone would want to do this to themselves.The plot was interesting and kept me reading. Jonah, our main character had many problems that he didn't know how to deal with - hence breaking his bones so they grow back strong, making him stronger for his family. I felt that the ending left us a little short. I didn't like that I started to care for Johan and I never knew or got the feeling he would be okay. I would have given it more stars if I had more closure. I know sometimes not having closure in a book fits, but for me... I needed more with this one.Also, Naomi, Johan's best friend pushed my buttons. I was frustrated that she didn't listen to her best friend and support him when things changed or he was trying to change. She used such peer pressure on Jonah that it was hard to read at times. I guess I just felt that he had so much going on that he didn't need that from her piled on top of it all too. Then again, that's true, in some form with most teen's right?His family didn't know what to do about this either. That part of the book was more then realistic as so many parents face things with their kids that they don't understand, don't know what to do with. I knew that they wanted to help but felt so helpless in the situation with not only Jonah but with his other brothers, both younger - one brother Jesse who's allergic to just about everything and a baby brother Will who does nothing but cry.In the end this book wasn't what I was expecting. It was a nice change from what I tend to read. I like finding different stories and this was just that. I commend Moskowitz for writing this book and getting published while still in High School. I'll be looking for her next book to see what she has in store for us next.

From the first page this book held me in thrall and I read the entire book in one sitting. The characters surged off the page and their dilemmas drew me in to a point where I felt their pain. It's hard to believe such a powerful story could be written by someone so young, yet the raw emotion that spills from the page could come from no one but a teenager. The ending felt a little forced, which is why I haven't awarded 5 stars. I think as soon as people outside those who enabled him found out the secret, things fell apart to a degree, but then, maybe that's the point because his world fell apart too.

Jonah has a twisted best friend named Naomi, a younger brother Jesse who's allergic to practically everything (milk can lead him to death's door), and an infant brother named Will who won't stop crying. Also, his parents are nasty to each other and should be divorced. How does he cope and make sense of things? By breaking himself. Jonah purposefully gets into accidents and keeps a tally of his broken bones. But his addiction to pain and healing gets out of control.Things became increasingly worse for Jonah, which made me flip the pages faster to see if he would drop his goal of being constantly broken or take steps to overcome what drove him to hurt himself. The characters were deep and believable. I'm impressed that the author was a teenager when she wrote this. Now I'm eager to read the Moskowitz's second book, INVINCIBLE SUMMER.

This was a pretty good book. I will definitely read other books by this author. I can't wait to see how her writing matures after high school. I agree with others who say the ending wasn't that great, but the rest of the book more than makes up for the rosy ending. I think the author got tired of writing and wanted to wrap this project up and ended it in a way that didn't satisfy me. Don't get me wrong, the ending was OK, just disappointing after the rest of the book was so well written.

Another refreshing and satisfying read from Moskowitz. As with Gone, Gone, Gone the strength is in the world she has crafted for her characters. She writes interesting and layered protagonists, but it is the world that they occupy - that OCCUPIES THEM - that brings them to wonderful and complex life.

Break is a great read about Jonah, Will and Jess. Their family isn't quite perfect causing a lot of conflict throughout the story. Jonah breaks his own bones in an odd form of self harm in order to control the pain in his own way. Jess is a walking allergic reaction and Will isn't perfect himself. Together they must attempt to work through their problems and begin to understand each other in the process. I myself am a self harmed and don't have the perfect family so in a way I can relate. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy the book as much as I do.

Bought the Kindle version.It was a interesting book. A very quick readthat kept my interest. I think I've read this about 3 times.The book is about a guy named Jonah who has a complicated family life. His brother Jesse is allergic to everything and his baby brother will cries no stop.Jonah is on a mission to break every bone in his body. To be stronger. I feel like the book was well written.It felt like you knew the characters.

A great read, especially if you're into minimalist writing. Moskowitz can keep it fun yet emotional. It's one to read aloud for sure.

The premise for Break both horrified and fascinated me when I decided to finally check out Hannah Moskowitz's works. (Maybe I could set aside March as Moskowitz Month? Hmm.)I'd heard a lot of good things about Teeth, but I thought I'd plunge into the deep end with Break (any pun about Teeth being unintentional, believe me), and... you know the funny thing?The day after I bought it, I tripped over and broke one of my toes. Then the next day, my dad slipped and rolled down a muddy embankment and badly bruised his ribs. Fate, your sense of irony has been duly noted.So, yes. Going into the story after reading the rather compelling sample chapter, I had a few questions I hoped would be answered over the course of this book.1. Why the hell would you break your bones in order to take your mind off your mental anguish? I understand self harm, but this is a bit of a step too far, don't you think? I actually wondered at first if we'd find out that our main character Jonah (classy name - he's being swallowed by a big ol' whale of depression, of course) had one of those conditions where you couldn't actually feel pain. I read about it in a magazine years ago - a mother had twins with this condition who would experiment in bending their fingers back as far as possible, often to breaking point. They'd hear the break and feel this sort of numb sensation, but never the "OH GOD OH GOD OW" feeling you get when you realise you've broken a bone.2. Since this book is set in America, Jonah's really accomplishing nothing but putting his parents in medical debt by voluntarily breaking his bones like this. Sure, it's a cry for attention, but it's a rather financially draining way of going about it. I've lived in a country with socialised healthcare all my life, and never had to pay a penny for hospital or clinic visits. (Yes, there are taxes and specific prescriptions, but my point is, you don't have to pay for just visiting your doctor or winding up in Accident and Emergency after injuring yourself.) When I broke my collarbone on holiday in Germany, I was absolutely flabbergasted to discover the ambulance ride + the X-ray + the consultation + the sling totted up to £450.00, because I didn't have German health insurance and my EU travel health card thingamajig had run out. Someone's got to foot the bill, you know. I know there's insurance and such, but... surely the family's health insurance company would be coming after them?3. I know it's supposed to be ironic that Jonah believes breaking his bones makes him stronger, when it actually makes everything worse for him. But don't broken bones do that in general? That collarbone fracture I spoke of last paragraph has basically destroyed my ability to lift my left arm up in the air. It just stops if I raise it too high, and if I try to push it further, it really hurts. I've also broken my femur, albeit mildly, after being run over by a car, and I've had a slight limp in my right leg ever since. When it's revealed near the end of the book that Jonah has actually contracted a life-threatening bone infection from constantly fracturing them, I was just like: "Hate to say I told you so!"Normally I don't have these kinds of questions going fresh into a book, but all the same, the premise did baffle me.The story continues to follow the self-destructive main character Jonah as he does all the typical misanthropic YA teenage boy things. He casually insults people, refuses to go the whole hog with his sort-of girlfriend because spending too much time with her is 'too relationship-y', and paints his parents as useless, irresponsible, and treats any other authority like dirt on the end of his shoe. So, you know. Somebody who understands him is a great person, somebody who questions what he's doing is just the Man, man.There's this part where Jonah is in the psychiatrist's office. The night before, he explained his interest in Confucianism (more specifically, how it relates to the family unit) to his friends, who seemed to all agree with him. On the other hand, Jonah's psychiatrist immediately sees the flaw in his thinking, and Jonah's narration reminds us that anyone who doesn't understand this perfect logic is a small-minded Western thinker. Yeah... I don't really like you, Jonah.You know how I said about that condition where you can't feel pain earlier? Well, Jonah has to have the highest pain tolerance I've seen. The mentions of the physical pain are pretty sparse. His broken arm throbs only every once in a while, his broken femurs are just alluded to as a period in his life in which he had to take pain medication and do physiotherapy, and apparently he gets around after breaking eight of his toes by simply walking on the balls and heels of his feet. I know there's supposed to be this whole mental anguish vs. physical pain battle going on, but I just don't particularly understand Jonah's motive. This voluntary bone-breaking is accomplishing nothing. There's no pain release, there's no cathartic sting, there's no sense that Jonah feels better after breaking his bones. There's just this adrenaline rush when he flings himself off a high place or slams his hand in a car door or whatever, then a whole load of pain that cripples him and puts him in the hospital. I just... don't get it. I don't want to sound like some insensitive arse who knows nothing about self-harm, but I can see why people cut themselves. Jonah's constant fracturing of his bones just doesn't make any sense to me.The two girls in this book were kind of weak too. Charlotte represents stability, I guess, and Naomi represents Jonah's more destructive side. Naomi's quite happy to video-tape Jonah breaking his bones, and keeps badgering him to keep up with this lifestyle when he realises later on that breaking all his bones is in fact accomplishing nothing. Charlotte, on the other hand, seems really disposable. He talks about how he makes out with her and really likes her, but he's not ready to commit, and she's hardly in the story once she tells the principal and school counsellor about Jonah's tendencies.I think Break strove to do a lot, but didn't really finish itself up in time. Some of the biggest subplots get resolved with no pomp or circumstance whatsoever. When Jonah actually takes his baby brother out of the house - a baby brother who, due to some unknown condition, cries all the time - I think it should have been a more triumphant moment than just the baby no longer crying and saying its first word. Jonah getting together with Charlotte at the end didn't do anything for me either, and nor did Jesse getting with Naomi.The psychiatric ward bit didn't really do much for me either. I didn't care about the 'friends' Jonah made, and it wasn't really a shocking revelation when Jonah's self-destructive tendencies begin rubbing off on some of these friends. The whole episode just felt like a convenient holding pen for our main character until he needed to be back doing things again. (I'm also having a hard time believing that security at a psychiatric retreat would just be one door with a coded lock. Seriously?)On the plus side, though, Hannah Moskowitz isn't a bad writer. She's really good at capturing high emotion, like the panic that sets in when Jonah accidentally sets off his brother Jesse's terrible allergies, and the maelstrom of emotions that sets in when Jonah leaves the psychiatric retreat and realises the folly of what he's doing and thus has an internal crisis.Jonah's not quite the worst protagonist I've ever read. He's whiny and annoying, sure, but you're still invested in why he's so adamant that he must break his bones in order to escape his hectic family and interpersonal life. Hannah Moskowitz is a talented enough writer to keep the whole premise trucking along, even if there are so many questions left unanswered by the end, as well as subplots that are kind of sloppily tied up. I guess they're all just open to interpretation. 3.5/5.

For such a great story, the ending was abysmally disappointing. Coming from someone who was put in a psychiatric unit because someone ratted me out, one doesn't simply forgive the snake that outs them. Plus, the whole thing with that supreme bitch Naomi was absurd and infuriating. The fact that Jesse forgave her for breaking Jonah's cheek - probably due to her own obsession with Jonah breaking bones because she's too much of a pathetic pussy to do it herself - was perhaps the pinnacle of bulls***.Great premise. Horrible, unbelievable, utterly pathetic characters.

My daughter loved it