I love coming of age young adult novels. This was such a good read, I’ll for sure be reading more by this author.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this early copy!

I recommend checking out this YA Contemporary that handles tough subjects like grief.

This is a really sweet story with great characters, good plot and easy to read writing that flows. I loved the characters, became quickly invested in them and felt their ups and downs. It’s got a different enough premise to make it interesting to the reader. YA fans won’t regret taking a chance on this book!

The Unbroken Hearts Club is a pretty good book! In it, we follow Logan, who is coming up on the one-year anniversary since her mother's death from Huntington's disease. Logan is struggling with school work and her social life as she works through her grief and deals with worry over whether she may also be looking at a life cut short by Huntington's.

Her dad begins hosting a bereavement group in their basement, and insists that Logan help with hosting duties, Using this as an opportunity to work on a school project, Logan eventually finds a way to begin to move past her grief and address her fears.

From the Orca Soundings collection which is designed specifically to get more kids reading, I think this book really works. Meant for kids aged 12 and up, this is a great example of a book that's edgy enough to be appealing without being so long as to be daunting. For avid readers, it's likely this book will seem a bit lacking in depth, but the target audience should really like this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and Orca Book Publishers for providing me with a DRC of this book.

Book Review
Title: The Unbroken Hearts Club (Orca Soundings) Kindle Edition
Author: Brooke Carter
Genre: YA/Romance/Family
Rating: *****
Review: We are introduced to Logan whose mother has passed away from Huntington’s disease and she has come to realise how different she and her father are. While her father starts a support group and wants to talk about the loss of his wife, Logan just wants to be left alone, preferably in her darkroom. We also know that her best friend Cole has a major crush on her, but she doesn’t feel like she can return his feelings whether this is because of grief, being asexual or something else is unknown as of yet.
Since it has been nearly a year since her mother’s death, Logan’s father decides to hold a support group in their basement and ropes Logan into helping possibly with the hope that it will help Logan deal with her own grief which seems to be consuming her and leaving her unable to process her mother’s death and move on.
As time goes by Logan and see her father moving on with a woman named Kelsey who is also part of the support group. After a huge fight with Cole over whether or not she will ever be able to love him the same way he loves her, the emotional blindfold Logan has been hiding behind is ripped away and the first person she turns to is Kelsey, but she does feel that she is missing out on something special with Cole but doesn’t yet have the drive to fight for it.
The ending of The Unbroken Hearts Club was beautiful even though it almost made me cry. It kind of has a Fault in Our Stars vibe but focuses on those left behind rather than on those that have the illness. It is a short, emotional read that I highly recommend.

The Unbroken Hearts Club by Brooke Carter was enjoyable overall, but it seemed like it could use some editing to make the prose a little tighter.

I really like the premise of the story. Lo is a high school senior whose mom died of Huntington's disease about a year ago. Her best friend, Cole, has been supportive and is helping her through this rough time. As her final days of high school draw to a close, she's in danger of failing her Media class. At the same time, her dad is drawing closer to a lady from his bereavement support group, which starts meeting at their house, and Cole wants to be more than just friends.

The story itself was enjoyable. I thought Lo and her father's grief seemed realistic, and I liked the characters. I also liked the Huntington's aspect of the story, which seemed unique.

There were a few drawbacks: I thought the development of Cole and Lo's relationship seemed a little sudden. The dialog could have been edited in some places as well.

Despite it's small problems, I think this makes a fun novella.

I thought this story had a lot of good things as well as things that needed improvement. The portrayal of moving on from a loved one's death was very realistic and was dealt in a way that most books can't pull off. There were some points where I felt the story lacked-such as the relationship with Cole and Logan. I was glad that there was a strong relationship between Logan and her father. It was a very quick read and I did enjoy the book overall.

I have read several of the Orca collection books and while this one had an interesting premise, I admit that I just could not get into it.

I think my biggest issue was the writing. It felt flat and the author never really manged to make me care about the characters.

***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of THE UNBROKEN HEARTS CLUB by Brooke Carter in exchange for my honest review.***

***MILD SPOILERS included to explain my review

Logan’s mother dies of Huntington’s Disease, a degenerative condition 100% fatal to those who inherit the gene mutation. A year later, stymied by depression and grief, she risks flunking senior year. Her father convinces Logan and her best friend Cole, who not so secretly loves Logan, to assist in his grief support group.

THE UNBROKEN HEARTS CLUB has much to love and much to loathe. Logan’s relationship with her father is both sweet and realistic. I especially appreciate how she was accepting of her father’s new relationship. Often times teens with parents dating are portrayed as an resentful, angry trope. I also enjoyed the exploration of Huntington’s in a manner that gave enough information without being overtly educational and appreciated that Logan had an answer. Open ended cliffhangers drive me nuts.

Cole and his relationship with Logan dragged down my rating and enjoyment. I am uncomfortable when teen boys don’t respect boundaries and don’t take no for an answer. Portraying this as romantic sends the wrong message about respect. When adults reinforce the overstepping of boundaries, that doubles the wrong message. For this reason, despite the parts I loved about the book, I regretfully cannot recommend THE UNBROKEN HEARTS CLUB.

I mostly liked this book. I liked Logan and Cole and her dad and Kelsey and the Broken Hearts Club. I even liked Sienna. I liked the way that the book didn't get stuck in the usual trope where the teenager hated the dad's new girlfriend.

But I couldn't get past the one glaring plotline, involving Cole's video of Logan. He claimed that he accidentally recorded her grief after his own stop-motion plasticine video. If that's the case, how did it get spliced into his Heartbreak Club Media Arts project video? Either the author's explanation is faulty or he deliberately added the recording to the project and then lied about it.