Review: We Come Apart by Sarah Crossan and Brian Conaghan

We Come Apart by Sarah Crossan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

**Disclaimer: eARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**

First off, One was one of my favourite books of last year and so when a new Sarah Crossan book came across the horizon, I pounced on it. If you haven’t read One yet, just know that it’s a beautiful and quick read, and well worth the hype.

We Come Apart is a new book from Sarah Crossan and Brian Conaghan, told from dual perspectives. Nicu is a Romanian immigrant, who has come to the UK with his mum and dad to earn some extra cash for his upcoming arranged marriage. Jess is a British girl who has fallen in with the wrong crowd, and who is experiencing domestic violence at home. They meet at a youth reparation scheme, picking up litter, and become friends.

I love reading novels in verse since I picked up One – it’s a really powerful medium, but also really quick and accessible to read. The writing here is also really clever – Nicu’s broken English was difficult to get used to at first but really brought life to a character struggling with his English language skills.

This book was especially poignant regarding racism in the wake of Brexit, and the bullying Nicu faces is worsened by taunts of ‘I though we’d voted you out of this country’.

Due to the topics discussed in this book, I imagine some readers might find it difficult to read and please do keep that in mind before picking this one up.

I only had two issues with the book – one is that I wanted more from the conclusion, and the other that I felt Jess’s storyline coming from a working class household blighted with domestic violence was a little cliché and perhaps dangerous (but this is a symptom of fiction in general I think).

If you enjoyed One, We Come Apart is another great novel from Sarah Crossan and Brian Conaghan and well worth the read. I’m looking forward to more books from these two authors!

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Review: One by Sarah Crossan

One by Sarah Crossan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was recommended to read this book by #SundayYA, during a twitter conversation about disability in YA. I’m planning on reading more books which feature disability, so if you’ve got any recommendations, send them my way!

Tippi and Grace are conjoined twins, and at sixteen years old, are much older than they were expected to live. As the medical bills money worries pile up, their parents can’t afford to home school them anymore, and they must adjust to starting high school (and the real world).

The book is written in free verse, which is unlike any other book I’ve read before. With only a few words on each page, I sped through this book in about two hours. While I did really enjoy the book, the format has both good and bad sides. The book is easy and quick to read, and I felt the emotional parts of the book were emphasised through the format. However, speeding through the book meant it felt like it lacked some depth for me. Tippi and Grace’s day-to-day lives aren’t really explored in too much detail, which is something I would have liked to see.

The book is also written from the perspective of Grace, which I liked, although maybe a dual POV would have felt more natural.

I loved the family, if only because they were dysfunctional, with their own problems and lives. The characters felt fleshed out and realistic, and I enjoyed the side stories following the other characters. I felt the problems facing conjoined twins were explored in a satisfying, although predictable way.

The reason I can’t give this book 5 stars is simply because there’s no real resolution. Like a lot of YA books I’ve read recently, it comes to this great crescendo, and then the last few pages are just confusion. More epilogues please! That being said, the ending was really well done (except for the confirmation of what actually happened).

I’m really looking forward to reading more books that tackle disability in an interesting way, and this book certainly does that.

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Have you read this book or another about disability? What did you think? Tweet me at @AnnaliseBooks or comment below!

 

Annalise x