Review: The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers

Goodreads 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?"

The cover made me want to read the book, made me want to admire it and have it on my shelf and know about the interesting story it contained. The synopsis had me intrigued. I had to know what sort of magic the book contained: was it straight contemporary, paranormal, or a hint of my beloved magical realism?

Well, I'm not going to answer that last question for you. Why? Because I think it would take away from the book as a whole. The fact that you don't know for sure, that you question the book and its genre I personally feel is one of its greatest charms.

I was morbidly fascinated with the Secret Sisterhood, and by that I mean the girls who made up the Sisterhood as opposed to the book of the same title. I wanted to know what made these girls tick, what their stories were, everything about them. For me they were the driving force of the story, of everything. When everything else got me down, when I thought of putting this book down, it was their siren call that had me picking it right back up again.

For me the first hundred or so pages seemed to drag; I felt like I was just slogging along and was considering putting the book aside for another read, but something kept me pressing on. So I kept going. I put the book down several times over the course of the day but always picked it back up and read a chapter or two, sometimes less than that and only a few pages until I found a break in the text but I always kept reading. And the story did pick up, and by the end I was flipping pages so fast it seemed as if they were disappearing. I was suddenly at the end with no clue how exactly I had gotten there.

Lucy was an interesting, albeit average, narrator. I think its the comparison to the Sisterhood that has me thinking that if I'm going to be honest. Probably because we know all of Lucy's thoughts and the other girls are such mysteries, enigmas, I just couldn't help but want to know more about them. They called to me because I knew so little, because they were so mysterious. Lucy was all out there. But you could relate to her to some extent. Whereas the boyfriend that dumped her? SERIOUSLY IRRITATED ME. I did not like this guy, I had little to no sympathy in regards to the break-up, I was thrilled to see him go. He was just...clearly not right for Lucy and it kind of irritated me that she wanted him so badly. But I guess we've all been there and done that.

Yay for realism.

My final thoughts? Despite the rather slow beginning, I liked The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers. I think it had a mythology going for it all its own, its own sort of history and meaning to the mundane. And to the "fine" art of breaking hearts.