Book Review: Tears of the Broken

When it comes to books, I rarely tee one high and swing for the fences because I’m a writer too and I know somebody somewhere could do the same to me and you know what? Writing is hard work and I should acknowledge that, even when I’m reading books I don’t particularly enjoy.

But sometimes a book so monumentally bad comes along that it leaves me no choice. So, without further ado, lets get into this:

So, stop me if you heard this one. I just read this book about a girl who is DIFFERENT and UNIQUE and just moved from her small town to another small town and who meets a boy, a MYSTERIOUS boy who she is ENEXPLICABLY drawn to and who is ENEXPLICABLY drawn to her in return, but this boy is MYSTERIOUSLY MYSTERIOUS and HAS A DEEP DARK SECRET! And that secret is that he happens to be… wait for it…. A VAMPIRE who is a hundred years old, but the girl still loves this weird teenage looking freak and has to reconcile those feelings to be WITH HIM! And she doesn’t care that he sneaks in her room at night because he likes to WATCH HER SLEEP. And they are IN LOVE and their HEARTS ARE ENTERTWINED FOREVER!

Sound Familiar? No, I didn’t read Twilight again. I’m not that desperate. Instead I read Tears of the Broken by A.M. Hudson, which is a cheap knock off of the Twilight series in just about every way imaginable. This book is what would happen if somebody took all the major conceits from Twilight and put it in a blender with pointless dialogue and half-baked plot points and hit pulse.

And the resulting glop is not palatable at all, not in the slightest. 

So here's the plot in a nutshell. A girl (Amara Rose) has to move halfway across the world after her mother and baby brother pass away in a car accident. She's forced to live with her dad and step family and go to another school. She meets a boy, David who is intriguing and who she falls for immediately but he has a secret he can't tell and has to go away. She falls apart because she's in love with him and can't bear losing her family and then him too and it goes all sideways with the teen angst and pointlessness from there.

And I mean POINTLESSNESS. Dialogue gets repeated almost per vatem in some places and certain plot points get totally overlooked or completely stalled so that they can be answered in other books, maybe? There’s the whole hullabaloo about Ara having her best friend (a boy) come stay with her family that gets started and then postponed. Then there’s this big masquerade ball that gets mentioned but also stalls. Yes I get that there needs to be some set up for other books in the series, but this book shouldn’t be all set up and no action. And that’s the really bothersome part. There is actually no pay off at all to be had in this book. There was no climax that I could find, no poignant message to be derived from the drivel, it was just aimlessness, and it was aimlessness that I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to its better counterpart, Twilight, and that’s not saying much, because Twilight, fine I’m just gonna come out and say it, ain’t that great to begin with. It’s good, it’s interesting, but it ain’t that great.

While reading, I didn’t check the publication date, so I tried giving this book the benefit of the doubt, like maybe it didn’t rip off the Twilight series wholesale in hopes of scalping some of its readers. Maybe it came before it and Meyers decided to perfect the idea, who knows right? Nope. No such luck that. Hudson even goes so far as to make a comparison to her version of a vampire and Meyer’s version, to wit:

“Well would you expect anything less than fear, David, You’re a dangerous creature. You’re not a Cullen.”

And the emphasis was even the author’s, like she was drawing us in all “see what I did there. And to top that all off there’s even more baiting:

“Great books, though.”

“You read them?”

“Of course.” He breathed out.

She even half-assed her compliment to the books she’s ripping off. Who does that? It’s all just cheaply wrought, which would really piss me off if I didn’t get it for free (Thanks Free Book Dude!). As it is, I feel like the author should’ve paid me to read it, because it felt like WORK that I really didn’t want to do at all. I powered through about 75% of it, and when I got to the last 25%, and I realized the pointlessness of it, it took all of my readerly discipline to finish it. There were several times where I sat the book down and gave it the most massive eye roll I could affect. Because it was eye roll worthy, and very cringe inducing to the point of distraction.

Now that I got all of that out of my system, and because my momma said if I can’t say something nice, I should say anything at all, I’ll attempt, in probably the same half-assed manner as the book was written (heh) to give this steaming turd pile a couple of compliments.

The one thing that I liked about this book is that the main character had the good sense to be disgusted by David (THE VAMPIRE) and repulsed by his feeding off of humans. That drove me nuts about Bella in Twilight, that she’d just accept it and him full-heartedly. That always struck me as odd. At least Ara was not into it, even though it didn’t last long, at least there was some well placed trepidation in play.

Also, the other part I liked was the scene underneath the auditorium stage. It was torrid and flirtatious and when I got there I was like “Finally! Something I can eat up with a spoon.” But it took forever to get there and it fell flat because of all the glop that was before it.

So, in summation, if you feel like you need a book that you could tee up high and send to the rafters on your pure hate fumes alone, this book should be right up your ally. Otherwise skip it. Final Grade: D! Minus! I’d give you an F but that would only mean having to see you in summer school!