ARC Review: Beauty of the Broken by Tawni Waters

Beauty of the Broken by Tawni Waters
Release Date: September 30 2014
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Format: ARC Paperback
Pages: 368
Genre: Contemporary
Source: Publisher

Goodreads Synopsis:
In this lyrical, heartwrenching story about a forbidden first love, a teen seeks the courage to care for another girl despite her small town’s bigotry and her father’s violent threats.

Growing up in conservative small-town New Mexico, fifteen-year-old Mara was never given the choice to be different. Her parents—an abusive, close-minded father and a detached alcoholic mother—raised Mara to be like all the other girls in Barnaby: God-fearing, churchgoing, and straight. Mara wants nothing to do with any of it. She feels most at home with her best friend and older brother, Iggy, but Iggy hasn’t been the same since their father beat him and put him in the hospital with a concussion.

As Mara’s mother feeds her denial with bourbon and Iggy struggles with his own demons, Mara finds an escape with her classmate Xylia. A San Francisco transplant, Xylia is everything Mara dreams of being: free-spirited, open, wild. The closer Mara and Xylia become, the more Mara feels for her—even though their growing relationship is very much forbidden in Barnaby. Just as Mara begins to live a life she’s only imagined, the girls’ secret is threatened with exposure and Mara’s world is thrown into chaos.

Mara knows she can't live without Xylia, but can she live with an entire town who believes she is an abomination worse than the gravest sin?




 My Thoughts:
Beauty of the Broken was nothing that I ever could have expected. This expertly crafted debut has so much pain and anguish and love and acceptance wrapped within these pages that it is hard to sift through all of the emotions that this book has conjured up. The raw intensity is mind blowing. I have not seen such a more fitting title for a book in a long time.

Tawni takes us on an incredible journey through the young life of Mara. Her life is anything but perfect and Ms. Waters does not old back with this devastatingly beautiful book. It is not rainbows and fairy tales but heart ache and destruction but as this fitting title reminds us there is beauty that can be found.

My heart was literally ripped wide open and I believe I lost a little bit of myself while reading. This is an extremely gripping novel. The intensity may surprise you but you would not have gotten the full impact without it. Beauty of the Broken is a stunning debut and it a must read. 

Bravo Ms. Waters for breaking my heart and leaving tear stains across my pages.