Early Review: All the Broken Pieces

Author: Cindi Madsen
Published: December 11th 2012
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Paperback, 304 pages
Pre-order: The Book Depository


I must have read around fifteen books about memory loss in the last two years, and 90% of them just sort of blended together after a while. I’m afraid All the Broken Pieces will join that crowd in no time. It’s been a few days and I’m already a bit hazy on the details, but I’ll do my best to make it as clear as possible for you so you can decide for yourselves. There are no major flaws I can point out, and I won’t try to convince you NOT to read it, quite the opposite, in fact. The story pulls you in quickly enough, the pacing is decent and the characters are interesting so there’s no real reason not to, if a good pastime is all you’re looking for.

My biggest problem with Cindi Madsen’s second book was that I didn’t believe any of it. Olivia wakes up in a hospital room with no memory of how she got there. Her parents are there, overjoyed that she woke up from the coma and anxious to get her in a better shape so they can move across country, supposedly to escape the bad memories. Liv isn’t too thrilled about moving, she’d rather stay where she is and try to remember her past, but her parents are determined to make a new start, so they do. In a matter of days, Liv finds herself in a small town in the middle of nowhere.
Her school life is exactly what you’d expect from this type of book: there’s a girl she instantly befriends, the mysterious bad boy who turns out not to be so bad after all, the prerequisite mean girl who just happens to be the bad boy’s ex, and plenty of high school drama to keep it all together. Finding a single memorable thing is an impossible task.

The love interest becomes clear very early on, and their budding relationship follows a fairly predictable pattern. While I have absolutely nothing against Spencer himself (I found him quite charming at times), their push-pull dynamic started driving me crazy after a while. He would be all kind and full of understanding one day, and completely cold and uncommunicative the next, which was fine for a while, but was taken a bit too far in the second half. His reasons for acting in such a way, once they were revealed, were pretty grave, but not convincing enough.

This is a fairly short review because there’s honestly very little to point out about this book. I was entertained, but unimpressed and it left me feeling lukewarm at best. For a second, more positive opinion, please read my friend Rachel’s review at The Readers Den.