I am an avid reader of mystery, thriller, and suspense books, and Marieke Nijkamp never ceases to keep my stomach in knots when I read. I have 2 other books from this author, and they are able to capture and hold my students' (and my) interest. In "Even If We Break," readers learn about a group of friends who uses a cabin to "play a game". This book definitely brings the thrill, and sometimes loses my interest with extra information. Some elements were a little confusing, but overall, it was a good, quick read. This gives a Cabin in the Woods meets Pretty Little Liars vibe.

Thank you to #Netgalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

As much as I enjoyed this author's first book, I could not even finish this one. Too many voices, too slow and it just did not keep me remotely engaged.

“I am white, non-binary, queer, and disabled” - Marieke Nijkamp
This is an important statement before I go any further in this review. There is a lot of diversity in this book - out of the five main characters, I think there is only one who doesn’t openly identify with the LBGTQIA+ community, and at least two have significant disabilities (one an invisible illness if I read it right); plus we have an autistic character as well!
I will admit, I DID go looking for information on the author, purely because of the amount of representation that we are hit with in the first chapter of this book. Being honest, I was a little wary of just how much there is, as I have had a few experiences recently where it just felt like the author simply wanted to “tick all the boxes” and prove they have diversity. This book however, despite my misgivings at the beginning, made sense and they didn’t feel like lip service. It felt more like when I was in a writing group, and the number of people who were LGBTQIA+, had invisible illnesses, or were on the mental health spectrum felt a lot higher than it did in a group picked from the street at random. And that’s ok. Creative people gravitate together - search disabled cos players for example. The are a lot of them out there, so it didn’t feel off to have that many different people in one place.
Ok. So. The beginning. This is my exact notes from 4% of the way into this book:
at 4% of the way thru I feel the need to go back and re-read because wait, who TF is Maddy? Is the MC (Finn) trans? they have a binder - injury or chest? have crutches - arth? Is Ever they/them?
Word of advice? Stick with it. This book was so good, once I got my head around the craziness that was the first 5-6% where we meet every single character in detail, I didn’t want to put it down.
And oh! The TTRPG game NEEDS to be a real game. If the author wanted to make a rule book/playable RPG out of it, I would be all over that. As a D&D nerd, the storytelling by Ever was absolutely beautiful. I would happily read the fantasy series which could use this in-book game as a jumping off point!
The teens are on a mountain, venturing into Gonfalon one last time before the end of high school - before they are separated by life moving forwards. Each if the teens is struggling with a secret; with grief; with something they can’ bring themselves to say out loud. Gonfalon and their RPG characters give them a chance to step back from their “real” problems and bond with their friends. Their game is interrupted when the high-tech. modernised “cabin” begins to have electrical problems, and things only go downhill from there, in the classic tradition of Pretty Little Liars, This Lie Will Kill You, There’s Someone Inside Your House, or movies like When A Stranger Calls.
The weaving together of the actual flesh and blood humans and their Gonfalon counterparts was perfect. The usage of the game being applied to real life gave the characters something to grasp hold of, to cling to in order to make it through the night. It was a clever parallel with how the group kept the teen together and functioning by creating a family of sorts - people who knew the real you, and didn’t judge.
“This world is a messed up and scary place. Life is too short and too hard not to embrace happiness and joy, courage and possibility, and sometimes fear and grief and sorrow too. We have to find our family. We are stronger when we stand against the darkness together, and if our brief moment of happiness is nothing more than a flare, it lights up the path for others.

Content warnings: fantasy, fantasy deaths, death, gore, blood, transphobic assault, mental illness, panic attacks, neuro-diversity (accurate thought processes could be triggering), drug use.
Overall Rating: 4.5 stars - I wanted to give 5 but the beginning was just a little too much knowledge dumpy for me. Will highly recommend however!

A group of friends is playing one last game, into their world of Gonfalon. The story is told from alternating viewpoints, and each friend has something to say about their friendships, and their friendships are fading. So, they know this may be their last game together at Liva's cabin in the mountain. There are some stories of murder in those mountains, and when things start to go wrong, the friends first thought is of those stories. As people get hurt and maybe even killed, the friends have to figure out who to trust and how to play a game to save their lives. This book dives into the behavior of the friends and what matters to each person.

I really had a hard time getting into this book. I'm not sure if it's because I am not really familiar with role-playing games, but it did seem well-researched and explored in the novel. I will applaud the author for the diversity in the novel!

A disappointing story that went nowhere really fast. I found myself having to stop reading. I just couldn't engage with the characters or the story - it just was not my cup of tea.

I’ve never read a book with so much diversity. I think it will resonate with a lot of young adults as it represent more of the current culture than any other book I’ve read. It’s diversity in race, which is one of the things that goes mostly unspecified, but neuro-diversity a gender-diversity are a big part of this book, but definitely not the main point.

Ever, Finn, Maddy, Carter and Lila are group of friends who are going to Liva’s cabin the woods to play their role playing game one last time. The group fell apart a couple months before and has been slowly crumbling away with all the secrets they are keeping. There are some ghost stories about the mountain and the cabin they use for the game, and when some freaky things happen they get scared. One of the friends gets killed, one goes missing and the other three must overcome some incredible challenges to survive. The ending was something I didn’t see coming, but it fit pretty well.

This a pretty well written YA novel, but there is one thing I really didn’t like. There were some sort of flashbacks going on for Finn and Ever to a person named Damien. They share a connection but the flashbacks are just a bit weird and random in the story, they don’t add anything to it. Maybe they are intended for you to suspect this person, but that doesn’t happen because there is so little and so random.

I am not going to lie this book was a slow start for me, I couldn’t get into the characters or the plot w role play gaming at its core. However, when I let it go and stopped over analyzing what I didn’t understand I really got into this books I became invested in the outlier cast of characters and how each would overcome their struggles. This book was also scary, I couldn’t read it at night lol but that made it even more interesting, it was both a thriller and a social analysis of sorts. This would be a great Bookclub discussion book.

I have such mixed thoughts on this book. I consider myself a fan of Marieke Nijkamp's. I LOVED her debut book....hated the second book she wrote, but was still super thrilled for this one and hit the button to request it on NetGalley as quickly as it was on there. And at first I was so disappointed. I was bored to tears by the beginning, I thought the whole role-playing game plot theme was dumb as could be, and at the 30% mark I was ready to DNF this and call it a day...but then something wild happened a few pages later and it turned into a page turning thriller and I couldn't put it down. It was still full of weird random flashbacks that were unnecessary, and she tried WAY too hard to diversify this book....I know that's what Marieke is all about, but a Trans character, an LGBT character, an autistic character, from a book of only 5 characters...and the line in the book about how they were considering adding another person to there group because it was too white kinda bothered me...After the mystery of the book unraveled it also just turned into a therapy session for the characters, and that part of the end bored me as well....

I still consider myself a fan of Marieke Nijkamp's, I'm glad I read the book, I did really enjoy the middle of it...but I wouldn't recommend it to people.

I still will look forward to whatever she writes next because her actual writing style is so good.....just all those weird plot decisions she makes bothers me.

Shocker another great book by Marieke Nijkamp!! With great characters and a suspenseful story this one has everything I knew it would. The RPG game plot is what got me hooked on this story. I never read anything like this before.

I received an ARC through NetGalley from Sourcebooks for this YA thriller. Five teens with a stressful friendship history go to a cabin to play an RPG, when things start to go off script and they are running for their lives. I liked the alternating character perspectives of 5 unique and diverse characters. Each character felt very distinct, but I wanted more backstory to make the tension higher. The story was not defined by their diversity, but about what got them to the cabin and what would help get them get out. I think Library teens would very much gravitate towards this book. Nijkamp knows how to write YA.

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC!

YO THIS WAS WILD (until about 2/3 of the book, then it kind of dragged)! This book was so incredibly well-written and the plot of it was great. Again, Marieke proves just what a great writer they are and how well they handle multiple POVs.

My favourite part of this book was the RPG element. I loved the little bits of RPG storytelling in between every few chapters or so. It was a nice way to break up the narrative without straying from the plot.

My only issue was the final third bit of the book. I fully understand that pacing is a thing and that you want to draw out who the killer is but even after we find out, it seems to drag for no reason. As most of the ending is the character realizing a bunch of things, I would almost have that before they find the killer as once you find out who the killer is, as a reader, your mind is kind of done with the book.

Then there is the issue of motive from the killer - I didn't feel like they got a chance to really have one final monologue that you would want to see in a mystery and the people remaining didn't fully understand their motive either which points toward a flaw in planning.

But honestly, other than that, this novel was great. So good I stayed up for hours past my bedtime and read it in two days.

*Spoiler free*

Even though thrillers are so hit or miss for me, I seem to be drawn to every single one I stumble across. This one was no different. I had seen it around here and there, but when I finally found out what it was about, I was intrigued. And when I got the chance to read it, I jumped. Broken friendships and a deadly weekend, secrets and lies. It sounded like something that'd terrify me in the best way. Trigger warnings: blood, addiction, gore

I guess thrillers that I love are just really hard to find for me. This definitely isn't a bad book and there were things that I really liked about it! There were just some aspects that I felt missed the mark or fell a bit flat.

Starting off, this book has SO MUCH REP. Like, I'm so shocked that I haven't heard more about this! There's a trans boy whose disabled, a non-binary person, and an autistic girl. I can't comment on the quality of the rep other than it's there. Expect the non-binary rep, which I loved. I also loved that so much of it is just there. The characters are trans, disabled, and autistic and that's just fact. I loved how it was such a big part of the book, but also felt so casual.

The other thing that I liked was that when this book got it intense, it went intense. When it decided to ramp things up, it went all in.

I also really liked the role playing game all the friends played! They created such a cool fantasy world and I loved how it played into the plot.

Now on to the things that weren't my favorite. I felt like this book was really, really wordy. There were so many flashbacks, and I didn't quite understand the point of them. I liked seeing the group of friends when they were happy, but I didn't quite get what they were supposed to add to the plot. And there just seemed to be so many of them. I think I got frustrated because I wanted things to move forward. There were so many long stretches of thought, about the deep feelings between characters or how they see their place in world, in between tense moments, that I felt like the tension and suspense was slowly draining out of the scene. And then flashbacks would happen and it just got two wordy for me.

This book also managed to seem too fast and too slow at the same time. I felt like two major things (trying to be super spoiler free haha) happened a bit too early. I felt like the thriller was kicking off and the mystery beginning before enough groundwork was laid. Then, as the book went on, I felt like the story dragged because of the wordiness. It was a weird mix of "please speed up" and "please slow down" at the same time.

I feel pretty neutral about the twist. It's dark and it where the book begins to get intense. I wasn't sure at first when it was revealed but the reasoning behind it was terrifying. Though, I do wish more time could have been spent on the effect it had and why it happened. I felt like it was cut a bit short and I would have loved to delve deeper into it.

All in all, I didn't hate reading this book. The writing style is incredibly readable and it's obvious that Nijkamp is really talented. I loved how much rep this book had and the intensity of it when it decided to go all in. There were just a few things that missed the mark for me. Nevertheless, I think it's a really solid book!

Marieke Nijkamp’s Even If We Break is a YA thriller, complete with murder, mystery, and a unique collection of characters who find themselves trapped in a cabin in the mountains. They must rely on each other and their past gaming adventure experiences to make it out alive.

I was ridiculously thrilled to receive an advanced digital copy of this book. I read This Is Where It Ends not long after a shooting in my school, and the book truly helped me to heal. It also helped me to distance myself from the situation at the same time, because it was an immersive, roller coaster of a reading experience. Even If We Break delivers the same experience, even if perhaps this one is a bit more reflective and character focused - but it would have to be, in order to achieve the goal of providing representation to the different characters present in the story. Each of them is a little broken, and their gender and sexual identities fall outside the “normal” characters typically encountered in books.

The story itself is paced quickly, with enough action, mystery, and dialogue to keep the reader engaged. The creep factor is high, and the anticipation of violence and even murder is built masterfully. I had to put the book away at night, because I was too freaked out and needed to wait until morning to finish it!

This is an excellent read. It will keep you interested throughout, and you’ll be engaged right until the end.

I'm torn.
This is the second book I've read by Marieke Nijkamp, and there were some things I enjoyed. Ahem:
1) It was definitely a thriller and I'm usually hard-pressed to find a thriller that doesn't keep me turning the pages
2) It's use of RPGs as the backdrop for the plot and the friendship was really interesting and well done; I hadn't seen a book that used that before. I'm not super familiar with that world, but it seemed very well-researched. And finally:
3) The diversity?
This is where this book gets hard to review for me. I really admire the work that Nijkamp does in promoting diverse books and calling for greater representation in YA. It just felt a little forced? I don't know how to explain it. I was thrilled to see representation in this book that I've literally never read in fiction before. And I appreciated that a character could have a disability, or not be neurotypical, or not be cisgender, and not have that be the only aspect of their personality. But the fact that there were soooo many of these aspects for such a small cast of characters, and many of them really weren't explored at all, it almost felt like they were just tossed in there, and didn't give any legitimate representation to the experience.
There was a comment early on in the book about how the characters were considering adding another member to their friend group because they were collectively too white. It just started to give me the vibe that this was diversity for the sake of getting diversity points.
This kind of plays into my overall problem with the book. It just lacks subtlety. Everything was extremely cut and dry; the characters almost felt like caricatures. They would go on paragraph long rants explicitly outlining their struggles, or what they're feeling, or how they believe things should be. I felt like I was just being handed morals.
The mystery element also was kind of lacking. Sure, there definitely was a mystery, but the reader isn't really given many opportunities to solve it. There is one solution that is foreshadowed so obviously throughout the beginning of the book that you realize it CAN't be that one, and the true solution just comes out of nowhere, with very little explanation for how it could've even been possible.
I do appreciate this book for what it did do well. It was fast-paced and easy, which is what I was hoping for. And it did give lots of important representation. I just feel like it could've been executed better. This is pretty similar to how I felt about Nijkamp's debut, as well. The ratings of her three books have been pretty consistent across Goodreads, so I'm wondering if her writing just isn't for me. However, if you're looking for a fast-paced story with some rep and RPG references, it's worth a shot.

Even If We Break is a gripping and pacey story about the lengths we go to keep friendships, no matter how broken they are.

Oh, no! I hear the choo choo sounds of the disappointment train is about to arrive to the “this story is going anywhere” stop! Five friends in the cabin with secrets gave me “Cabin in the Woods’ vibes but promising premise and exciting start turned into something slow, repetitive, boring drama. And slowly all those brilliant potentials start to drown in a muddy place as my dreams about reading action packed, full of adrenalin rush thriller disappear forever!

I like the representation of transgender kids and five friends’ gathering together for playing a game before parting ways is a promising idea to start a story. Finn got into a fight caused him walking with crutches and ending his friendship with Liva. And now they’re in the same group, barely looking each other’s faces. Ever suffers from guilt feelings because of burden of the secret he carries and Carter starts being paranoid because as soon as they reach the cottage where they perform their role-plays, finds notes about his secret left in his room. And Maddy is still traumatized, suffering from PTSD because of trapped in her burning car after her accident.

I actually didn’t expect their game would be a role-play, wearing costumes, investigating a murder mystery for visual universe. But I was still invested and kept on reading and second half of the book turns into some kind of teenager drama: instead of slow-building high tension thriller, the characters start to make long talks about their feelings and regrets so I felt like I was reading a never ending therapy session.

The conclusion of the story is not bad but I find it unrealistic and a little illogical. It didn’t fit my expectations. So I’m giving three stars only because of the smart plot, likable characters but in my opinion the second half of the book should be rewritten. The ultra- slowed down paced and story’s changing direction disappointed me. It was great start but it could be so much better.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for sharing this intriguing ARC with me in exchange my honest review.

I appreciate so many things about this book - the diversity, the setting (AN RPG! OMG!), the style of the mystery -- I just am not convinced it was executed extremely well. However, I think teens will love it and just maybe turn to RPGs as a result!

This book had SO. MUCH. POTENTIAL. The first half of the book did a really spectacular job building anxiety and suspense while creating an incredibly spooky ambiance. I loved that this book was about a bunch of kids who like to role play stories together. I loved the different point of views and how the author slowly began to unravel backstories and create tension between the characters. I loved the haunted cabin backstory and how that was woven into the mystery that the characters were solving. But then the back half of the book felt really slow and it felt like all of the suspense and tension kind of slowed down and came to a stand still so characters could have these long heart to heart conversations about how they felt about each other and how they were regretting not being honest with each other sooner. The plot twist at the end was okay, but felt kind of weak and unrealistic. I liked the hints about the culprit and the connection to the haunting.

Five friends head out for a weekend to complete their long-standing role-playing game, knowing it is the end as they graduate high school and head off on their own paths. Though they have grown apart over the years, each has their reasons for wanting to bring the group back together one last time. For one, the purpose is more deadly.

One of the main things I loved about this was the use of the RPG to drive the story-line. RPGs, like D&D, have risen in popularity over the last couple of years. I also love that the chapters are written from the various characters perspectives. For me, this made the characters feel very well fleshed out- I felt as though I was getting to know and understand them as individuals.

Nijkamp's acknowledgments point out how important it was for her to be able to write an autistic main character. I appreciated being able to see things from Maddy's persepctive in the book as she tried to deal with her neurotypical peers while also dealing with her own problems. Problems that weren't related to being autistic, but to other life events were essential in developing a multi-dimensional character.

I think one of the strengths of this book is the characters not being defined by any one thing- being autistic or trans are facts about who they are that help shape them, but these things don't supercede everything else the characters are dealing with.

I did figure out what was going on fairly early in the book, but I still questioned my assumptions until the revelations near the end. Great read!