Book Review: An Impossible Romance

Break To You by Neal Shusterman, Debra Young, Michelle Knowlden

Published: July 2, 2024

Summary from Goodreads:

Adriana knows that if she can manage to keep her head down for the next seven months, she might be able to get through her sentence in the Compass juvenile detention center. Thankfully, she’s allowed to keep her journal, where she writes down her most private thoughts when her feelings get too big.

Until the day she opens her journal and discovers that her thoughts are no longer so private. Someone has read her writings—and has written back. A boy who lives on the other side of the gender-divided detention center. A boy who sparks a fire in her to write back.

Jon’s story is different than Adriana’s; he’s already been at Compass for years and will be in the system for years to come. Still, when he reads the words Adriana writes to him, it makes him feel like the walls that hold them in have melted away.

This fast-paced, highly compelling tour de force novel exposes what life is like in detention—and reveals the hearts of two teens who are forced to live in desperate circumstances.

Confession:

This was a heartbreaking YA romance set in the most poignant setting, a youth detention center. I loved all of the characters and the story was wonderfully done. This was a book that was hard to put down because I really wanted to see how it was going to end, and if the characters would have their happily ever after.

The story is told by both Adriana and Jon, and they were both very sympathetic characters. The circumstances that brought them both to Compass were typical, although Jon’s was the more heartbreaking. The boys and girls in the detention center are kept very strictly apart, they only catch glimpses of each other rarely. How Adriana and Jon get to know each other through the journal was brilliant, especially how they pass it to each other.

I really liked both of them from the start. Jon has been in the detention center for years and so comes across as a hard and tough young man, but through his communications with Adriana we get to see the real person inside. Adriana quickly learns that she can’t really trust anyone in Compass, including the adults, but she does make alliances with some of the girls. She was someone that I could certainly empathize with.

The romance itself was very sweet, and I just loved the two of them together. The plan to get them together was quite elaborate, and it was fun to see it all work out for them. Of course given the circumstances, they don’t know where their relationship will go, but they can always hope for the best, and in this place and time, hope is all they have.

The setting of the juvenile detention center is what really sets this story apart from other YA romances. I can’t speak on how authentic the setting was, but it totally felt realistic to me based on what little I do know about these places. We don’t learn a lot about what brought some of these kids to the center, but the stories we do learn are heartbreaking. There are some kids who don’t belong, and others that have violent tendencies that were shaped by their experiences. But all of them deserved better treatment, especially by the adults around them. There were many adults that were wonderful with the kids, but most, especially the ones in authority, used the kids for their own purposes, which was horrible to read about. I think the authors did a good job of not glamorizing the setting for their audience, but didn’t make it as horrible as it could have been.

You would never guess that there were three authors writing this story, as it flowed seamlessly throughout. The pacing was perfect, and the addition of some poetry and the journal entries were also well laid out and made sense in the story. The ending was heartbreaking and yet a little bit hopeful. There is one character who betrays Jon at the end, whose motives were not as clear as I would have liked, but other than that, the ending felt authentic to the rest of the story.

If you are looking for a different kind of romance with a setting that will break your heart, this is one that you need to give a chance. I highly recommend it.