Broken Soup

by Jenny Valentine

PRMS hardcover 216 pages

genre: YA realistic

Rowan (15?) / brother Jack died on holiday / little sister Stroma / mom is grief-stricken / dad is absent / Bee becomes friend / Harper drives an ambulance

I booktalked this then thought - wait a minute! The mystery starts with a negative . . . do my students even know what a photo negative is? How old is this book? Published in 2008, I guess it isn't that unusual. But I read it to see if it would still "work" with my students who are almost all Smart-phone users and social media fanatics.

Character-driven story, but I didn’t connect with characters or their struggles much. Rowan is parenting her mom and Stroma, but her attraction to Harper and new relationship with Bee don’t ring very true. Ending a non-emotional event (Harper moving on; Rowan showing her fortitude.)

Pg 81 is where title comes from – Stroma drops a breakfast tray she has made for Rowan, making a mess of food and broken glass. “I tried to make things all nice and now look at this broken soup!” I like to “find” the title in the text, but this metaphor felt forced. Rowan and Stroma are living in the mess of their mother’s grief and inability to parent them.

Pg 137 makes me sad. “We were never fooled into expecting an afterlife, life the life we got given somehow wasn’t enough. . . . “ Wow. If it weren't such a blase' book (for me, at least), it would have been super depressing. Dealing with grief AND no faith in an afterlife.

This was an easy "delete and donate" title. It has never been checked out by my students and is in beautiful shape.