A review by jess_readsromance
All the Broken Pieces by Cindi Madsen

3.0

Donna asked me to review this for her as she didn't have the time. It's the second memory loss-car accident-YA book that I've read in the past two weeks. This one was pretty good overall. As a story it's pretty gripping from the get go, the pacing wasn't too bad and I was interested all the way through.

Liv is a pretty awesome character. She has no memory of the car accident, nothing before it anyway, but she seems to be recovering well apart from the flashes of what she feels are dreams, and what her mother claims is her brain making things up to deal with having no memory. She's a strong character although she finds it hard to deal with social situations now, she gets through it. I pretty much liked Liv from the start and I got pretty involved in everything she did which made the book easier to like and enjoy.

I have no major gripes with the book, except for this. It takes an extremely long time for everything to be revealed. Nothing much happens except for Liv starting school, trying to please the popular crowd but hating them too,dealing with Spencer blowing hot and cold. There just didn't seem to be much action involved, and I generally like YA books to be full of it. It's not until around the 84% mark that everything comes to light, even then. Nothing much happens. I just felt that it very much lacked action in places. That however didn't take much away from the enjoyment of the book, but I think I was expecting more.

There's a great element of mystery in this book, and that's great if you enjoy that. I do, most of the time if it's not too heavy on information etc. All The Broken Pieces has enough element of mystery and intrigue to keep the reader entertained, It just lacks action. That's where the star dropped for me slightly. It just lacked the 'shock factor', that's what I'm trying to say.

Overall it's not a bad story at all. It's not even a bad book, apart from lacking any action and things being revealed too late in the story I enjoyed it. I believe this is Cindi Madsens second book, so I will pick up another book of hers absolutely.

It's intriguing and mysterious, but lacks oompf! But it's definitely worth a read :)