Review: The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers by Lynn Weingarten

Title: The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers

Author: Lynn Weingarten

Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal Romance, Contemporary

Publisher: Harper Teen

Synopsis/Summary: If there’s an upside to having your heart broken, it’s this: A broken heart makes you brave.

The first day of sophomore year doesn’t go the way Lucy planned. After a summer apart from her boyfriend, she’s ready to greet him with a special surprise and instead gets a shocking one in return: He’s breaking up with her. Beyond devastated, Lucy has no idea how she’s going to make it through homeroom, let alone the rest of her life.

Enter three stunning girls with the unnatural ability to attract boys and an offer Lucy can’t refuse: They can heal her heart in an instant. And then she’ll be one of them—a member of a sisterhood that is impervious to heartbreak and has access to magic distilled from the tears of brokenhearted boys. But to gain their power, Lucy must get a guy to fall in love with her the old-fashioned way, and then break his heart in the next seven days.

While the sisterhood may need another Heartbreaker, Lucy’s only desire is to get her ex back. But how far is she willing to go, and who is she willing to cross to get what she wants? -Taken from Goodreads

     The plot of The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers are pretty simple, and rang true to the title. Lucy, our main character (this book was written in 3rd person POV), just got dumped by her boyfriend Alex, needless to say she was heartbroken, then something magical happened. A senior names Olivia offered her a chance to join The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers, and from then on we got to see Lucy's journey morphing into a better, less pathetic version of herself.

    The plot was pretty cute. There weren't really complex storylines, nor were there unfathomable mysteries, but this still sucked me in. Mostly I thought it was the idea behind the book that lured me. Heartbreakers, which in truth were a little like witches, as you could see from the blurb on the back of the book, were a really refreshing idea, and a fun new way to write a coming-of-age story about dealing with heartbreaks. And of course, we had our favorite ingredient, magic.

    Though the book concerned magic, I would still call it a contemporary read. It was sort of a story of how Lucy got over her heartbreak, and the process wasn't all that magical at all. Plus it brought us to some important philosophies such as how we viewed ourselves were actually reflected on how other people viewed us, nobody was absolutely perfect, but the idea was to believe we were good, not perfect, just good, and don't look down on yourself. That itself was a very important advice and the book delivered it without burdening the story at all. That made the book a very meaningful read.

    The book actually just span for seven days (eight days if you count the last few ending chapters), but out main character had changed a lot during these seven days. It was actually quite unrealistic, I mean, you couldn't change a person in seven days, at least not in the way Lucy did. She practically grew out of her old shell, not that it was bad, just that it happened within seven days was kind of unbelievable. Oh well, that was a small complaint compared to the whole goodiness of the book :P

    I also wanted to note the writing. It was really good. The book was told in 3rd person and if you had looked at some old posts you would know I usually hated them, but I liked the 3rd person narrative of this book! It flew seamlessly and there were no awkward moments at all, plus I was so into the book that I actually didn't realize it was in 3rd person until I took a break. I felt like I was looking at the whole story through Lucy's eyes, even though it was not in 1st narrative. It was definitely good and was a good example to 3rd person narrative books. I have read ones that was written awkwardly that I was very aware when the narrative moved from the mind of one character to another, it was quite annoying actually, but The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers didn't have this problem at all!

    The magic in this book was really unique. Unique as in it wasn't dark at all. Often I've seen books with magic element in it that portrayed it as dark, and sometimes, evil. For example the latest book that I've read, Beautiful Creatures actually featured magic as kind of dark too. Even Harry Potter portrayed magic at as a dark tool, at least in the later books. So there was no mistaking that many magic books that contained magic was also kind heavy, or dark. But not this one. The idea behind the magic was still pretty general stuff, although the broken-heart-tear thing was new and very fitting, it wouldn't stand out from all the magic books out there if the story was more dark. But since the book portrayed it as a more "light" thing, it made the book stood out. That was really good :)

     I had a pretty neutral feeling towards all of the characters. I didn't particularly like one character more than the other, or hate anyone (well except Alex, from the moment she broke up with Lucy, I knew he was not a good guy for her. Still Lucy had to stumble back to him, it was actually pathetic :P) in particular.

    To be honest, I actually hated Lucy during the first half of the book. She was so pathetic, clinging to someone who broke up with her and clearly didn't like her, hanging around like a puppy. Plus she totally lacked social skills, she would constantly went mute at times, because she was too afraid to say anything, which annoyed me a lot. Luckily as the story progress she became more brave(?), well, at least she had better social skills, and she was confident too.

    I never really liked Alex, not one bit. Even from memories of when he and Lucy were together, I knew he wasn't a good boyfriend, at least not to Lucy. He would always ignore her, and except for several moments, I actually couldn't see him show any affection towards Lucy at all. He clearly wasn't as into the relationship as Lucy, and that was well proven at the later part of the story.

  I would give this book 3.5 stars. It was a fun and light read, but I liked my books with a little bit more mystery. The book didn't offer much in terms of plot twists and turns, but it sure flew really well, with big incidents here and there too. They were plot holes, or at least loose ends if the book was to turn into a series, which I would happily buy and read, in the book, but it didn't really killed the enjoyment.  I would have given it more stars if the characters were slightly more unique though. One last thing to mention, the cover! It was gorgeous, and I didn't know why, but the cover reminded me of Christmas! Probably was the whole silver and red thing, or maybe it was that the book was released around Christmas :P I would recommend this to young readers of YA, this book was light and the story wasn't too dark, also this would appeal well to readers of contemp books, and paranormal readers could give it a go too, though this book was a little different than usual paranormal reads, this was more "light" ;)

Rating: 3.5 stars (I didn't have 3.5 stars image, so this one will have to do :P

Phew, we are finally back on schedule! This book was great, I read it in like 5 hours or so. So, some questions for you guys, what kind of sisterhood would you like to join? Would you want to be a heartbreaker? It isn't as bad as it sounds ;) Did you enjoy the book? Cool cover, right? There were quite a few loose ends, would you like a sequel and what would you want it to be about? Comment below, I am waiting :)