[This review contains spoilers.] This teen romance is mostly standard fare. High school senior Everly Morgan discovers that her boyfriend is cheating on her with her best friend, so she suddenly loses most of her social life. But then she meets Gabe, who is both hard-muscled and sensitive. Will there be a new romance for her? Of course there will. The publisher’s blurb describes this novel as “steamy” and it is true that Everly does end up having sex, but there’s no mention of any genitals, with all the description being about the prelude to the sex, and it’s all done in the context of romantic passion, so this is pretty tame stuff even compared to a lot of other contemporary romance novels.

What makes the novel worth a mention is the focus in the book on mental illness. Everly is already in psychotherapy for her anxiety problems even before the breakup, and seeing her ex-boyfriend and her ex-best friend being all over each other in the school hallways just makes things worse. Her therapist gives her cognitive-behavioral reframing exercises to help her change her overly pessimistic reactions to her situation. Through self-monitoring and doing the exercises regularly, she is able to see how different reactions are possible and she learns to reduce her anxiety though using more productive self-talk. It’s a nice illustration of a therapeutic exercise.

There is more serious mental illness in Gabe’s family. His sister who has taken a break from her university studies has bipolar disorder, and it turns out that she recently attempted suicide. Gabe is in therapy because he is having a hard time coping with what this means for him, especially as his sister is reluctant to take her mood-stabilizing medication and so she is at a high risk for having another manic episode or depression. The real highlight of Our Broken Pieces is the depiction of a family dealing with a daughter with a life-threatening mental disorder.

The whole book is short — the 288 pages must have big print. A fair amount of it features a high school prank and the inevitable prom, but there is still time for showing several therapy sessions and some interaction between Everly and Gabe’s family, which provides some depth of characterization. The writing is fast paced and simple. There is a strange parallel between the explosions and shattering caused by Everly and Gabe’s orgasms and the fragmentation caused by their psychological problems, and it isn’t clear whether the “broken pieces” of the title is more about the sex or the mental illness. It would be interesting if this were a deliberate part of the book, but it isn’t an idea that is explored.

© 2017 Christian Perring

Christian Perring lives and teaches in New York.