UGHHHHHHHHH.

Okay that's out of my system.

I just don't have a lot of patience for novels like this. I am all for flawed main characters, but the main protagonist Harper is not just flawed. She's aggravating, selfish, lies, is self absorbed and also solely fixated on the character of Declan. I just kept hoping for something, anything to redeem this character in my eyes and nope, she just kept on sucking til the end. I will add that sometimes having a flawed main character can still make a great book. Unfortunately that didn't happen here at all.

The Year We Fell Apart is told in the first person by Harper Sloan. The summer before Harper is about to start her senior year in high school and readers are alerted to something happening a couple of months ago that has left Harper in trouble with her parents and her kicked off the swim team.

Harper is still broken hearted after the end of her friendship with one of her best friend's Declan a few months earlier. It is slowly revealed though that Harper and Declan were not just best friends's they eventually became more and then Harper ended things.

We find out pretty quickly that Harper is in essence a drama queen.



Harper is exhausting. When you find out why her relationship with Declan ended you will roll your eyes. Everything with her is magnified by 100. And happy days, everything is about her.

We get a reveal about a person's death close to Declan, and nope Harper still talks about how this person dying affected her and caused her to get obsessed about people pulling away and leaving her.

She reminds me of a friend that I know that always has to re-up someone's story when talking. If you tell her that you were late because you got a flat tire, she is the type of person that will tell you that she was late one time for three hours because ninjas came out of nowhere and started a fight in downtown Washington, D.C.

The other characters in this book are paper thin. I think that Martin wanted to showcase some things here, but nothing worked at all. Harper's other best friends Sadie and Cory are given very little to do besides enable and or disapprove of her behavior.

The character of Declan was just a mess. I liked him though because at least he told Harper about herself once that had me cheering. I think the main issue with him is that because this story was told in the first person we don't get any insight into Declan that is not foisted upon us by Harper. And Harper we already know is flawed which makes me think her perfect recollections of how great Declan are, are not true either.

I wish that we had gotten more interactions between Harper and her family. Her family is going through a major upheaval in the book and it's barely given any thought here and there except when to move the plot along.

The writing was painful. I am usually always a fan of first person narratives in stories like this because it makes it more intimate for me as a reader. I like third person when we have more characters involved in a story so that way you don't feel like you are jumping in and out of everyone's heads. However, this time I would have preferred third person narration. We could have included other characters in this story like Declan or even Cory so we weren't so immersed in Harper's brain the whole time. There is only so much inner-angst that I can stand in this book and at about the halfway mark I was over it.

Further, things are slowly revealed at such a glacial place that the flow of the book is wrecked at about the halfway point. We also get an 11th hour reveal about things towards the last 5 percent of the book that actually made me laugh. Frankly I was disappointed with the author's decision to throw that little wrinkle in there. I really didn't get what Harper was so angsty about then with her whole don't tell Declan or he will hate me forever nonsense.

The ending left things on a totally off note. I think I was supposed to think deep thoughts but instead I was just thinking that Harper needs to think about getting a therapist. ( )

It's been a while since I read a really well written Contemporary Young Adult book, so The Year We Fell Apart was a welcome experience. Beautiful writing, believable characters, and just enough twisty issues to make everything interesting. I have to say, Emily Martin stole my heart. I powered through this in just a few hours and enjoyed every minute of it.

Now, keep in mind that this is definitely aimed at the YA crowd. If you can't settle yourself into the headspace of a teen, with all the crazy emotions and potentially bad decisions that come along with that, you probably won't be able to get into this book. See, Harper is definitely flawed. Just like all the rest of us are. It's actually one of the things I loved most about her character. While I didn't always love her for the choices she made, it was the fact that she was ultimately human that made me smile. Hell, we've all chosen made poor choices. We've all pushed that one person away who could have built us back up. It's a part of growing up.

In fact, what impressed me most was how expertly Emily Martin navigated the pitfalls of being a teenager who is still feeling their way in the world. Harper has to face one of the scariest things highschoolers ever face, and that's a reputation. One bad decision. One case of poor judgement, and Harper is forever labeled a "slut". The fact that Martin showed the pain that Harper was suffering and where that all stemmed from, only hammered home the fact that it was ultimately Harper's decision. Wrong or not, she didn't deserved to be judged so harshly. But she was. That's high school.

When you pile on a mother with an illness, a former best friend who disappeared and might be something more, and trying to add new friends to the mix? Well, it's no surprise that this whole story is a jumble of emotions. I felt for Harper. I've been in her shoes. Lots of people have. Which is why it's easy to relate to her, even when she's being a bit over-dramatic. Again, teenage hormones. They're hell.

There were only a few things that knocked this down a star for me, the main two being that I really wanted Harper's friend Sadie to disappear and the whole romance with Declan was never really resolved. Sadie was a terrible influence. I think Sadie was there to give a possible reason why Harper may have made the choices that she did, but truth be told I really wished she'd wise up and ditch her. As for Declan, well he was ultimately hot and cold. I know not every story can have a happy ending, but I think Harper deserved one. Or, at the very least, the concept that you can go through hell and come out whole on the other side needed to be emphasized. Something, to make it all worth while.

Overall, I enjoyed this read though! I'd say that if you're a fan of Contemporary YA, you probably will too. ( )

This book was pretty unremarkable.
I just finished reading it and immediately forgot parts of it. There is just nothing special about the story and it gets lost because there is nothing that draws you in. I didn't relate to the characters, I wasn't invested in the relationships, and I had problems with how characters reacted to certain situations. Despite that, this book was too simple to actively dislike, because there isn't much substance there. It's a generic story you've seen executed hundreds of other times in more compelling and engaging ways. This book is a background book.It is a quick book to read while you do other things, because you don't have to pay too much attention to it.
I probably wouldn't recommend it, but it is a easy read if you have nothing better to do. ( )

There was nothing that would make this book stand out. Characters were one-dimensional, plot was predictable and the prose was boring. ( )

I really enjoyed it while reading it, but as I finished I found myself looking for more? It was a bit shallow - things were alluded to but Harper never seemed to want to reflect on anything, just coasted from one emotion/reaction to the next. I didn't feel connected to any of the characters or the action.

There seems to be a trend right now where authors spend 300 pages getting you to a resolution and then wrapping everything up in about 20 pages. Personally, I would have preferred a bit more time spent on the consequences. Things don't need to be so perfectly squared off, especially at the cost of connecting to the story.

But, I really liked the story and the writing for a first novel. I'll be here for the author's next book. ( )