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justvaporlock's review
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
norehearsal's review against another edition
challenging
dark
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
toofondofbooks's review against another edition
5.0
Breakers follows Tyler, a seventeen year old boy, who is living in a really deprived area. His mum is a drug addict and incapable of looking after her family so Tyler is take care of his little sister Bean. He also has two older siblings, Barry and Kelly, who drag Tyler into their life of stealing from rich people’s homes. One night a burglary goes wrong and Tyler doesn’t know how to cope with what’s happened.
Early on in the novel Tyler is along with his brother and sister scoping out a home to burgle and Tyler had a bad feeling as soon as he starts going through the family’s belongings. Something isn’t quite right. Then the worst happens and the homeowner arrives home and Barry stabs the woman and leaves her for dead. At this point I was so angry with what they’d done but very quickly we see that Tyler has a conscience. He was forced to go along on the robbery and he tries to make right what has happened in the small way he can without implicating anyone. Tyler knows that if anything happens to him that his little sister will be taken into care and he refuses to let that happen to her.
This is a novel that shows the level of deprivation that people are living in, it was hard to read at times as Tyler has clearly taken on all responsibility for a sister that is only ten years younger than him. He hasn’t had much of a childhood and now at the point when he should be out with his friends and finding his feet in the world he’s having to be a parent to his sibling. He never begrudges anything that he does for Bean though, and she clearly trusts him to look after her so their bond is a beautiful thing in that shone through all the darkness in their lives. I never expected to feel so attached to Tyler. I soon had him weighed up and I was rooting for him all the way through this novel. There were moments when I could have cried for him, and moments when I wanted to swoop in and help. Mostly I was in awe of his ability to take care of his sister and his mum, and to never let his own fears and worries fall on their shoulders. He never loses compassion for his mum either, in spite of the mess she’s in and I found that incredibly moving. He gets frustrated with the situation she’s in but he never punishes her for it, he knows he might lose her to the drugs but part of him never lets go of the hope that she might one day find her way out.
Sometimes Tyler needs some time and space away from the weight of his family dramas and he breaks into houses for some peace, and to experience a short time of seeing what someone else’s family might be like. On one of these break-ins he meets Flick and they form a friendship. The contrast between Tyler and Flick’s lives was stark to begin with. Her family have money and Flick seemingly has everything she could possibly want. As the book goes on it’s apparent that they have more in common than it first appeared as both are looking for someone who understands them and accepts them for who they are. It seems like each may have found the person they need and I was willing for them to find a way to be together.
This is such a hard-hitting and devastating novel but it has such heart, which gives it a beauty that I wasn’t expecting. I knew I was going to like this book before I even started reading it but I didn’t expect that I was going to love it quite as much as I did. I finished reading this a few days ago and I feel like my love for it is just grown stronger. I keep thinking about Tyler and hoping he’s okay. It’s a book that gave me so much more than I was expecting and it’s left its mark on my heart. I now want to read everything that Doug Johnstone has ever written!
Breakers is fast-paced, gritty and dark but there is hope at its centre. I found this novel impossible to put down and I’m in awe of how good it is. I highly recommend it, it’s absolutely brilliant!
This review was originally posted on my blog https://rathertoofondofbooks.com
Early on in the novel Tyler is along with his brother and sister scoping out a home to burgle and Tyler had a bad feeling as soon as he starts going through the family’s belongings. Something isn’t quite right. Then the worst happens and the homeowner arrives home and Barry stabs the woman and leaves her for dead. At this point I was so angry with what they’d done but very quickly we see that Tyler has a conscience. He was forced to go along on the robbery and he tries to make right what has happened in the small way he can without implicating anyone. Tyler knows that if anything happens to him that his little sister will be taken into care and he refuses to let that happen to her.
This is a novel that shows the level of deprivation that people are living in, it was hard to read at times as Tyler has clearly taken on all responsibility for a sister that is only ten years younger than him. He hasn’t had much of a childhood and now at the point when he should be out with his friends and finding his feet in the world he’s having to be a parent to his sibling. He never begrudges anything that he does for Bean though, and she clearly trusts him to look after her so their bond is a beautiful thing in that shone through all the darkness in their lives. I never expected to feel so attached to Tyler. I soon had him weighed up and I was rooting for him all the way through this novel. There were moments when I could have cried for him, and moments when I wanted to swoop in and help. Mostly I was in awe of his ability to take care of his sister and his mum, and to never let his own fears and worries fall on their shoulders. He never loses compassion for his mum either, in spite of the mess she’s in and I found that incredibly moving. He gets frustrated with the situation she’s in but he never punishes her for it, he knows he might lose her to the drugs but part of him never lets go of the hope that she might one day find her way out.
Sometimes Tyler needs some time and space away from the weight of his family dramas and he breaks into houses for some peace, and to experience a short time of seeing what someone else’s family might be like. On one of these break-ins he meets Flick and they form a friendship. The contrast between Tyler and Flick’s lives was stark to begin with. Her family have money and Flick seemingly has everything she could possibly want. As the book goes on it’s apparent that they have more in common than it first appeared as both are looking for someone who understands them and accepts them for who they are. It seems like each may have found the person they need and I was willing for them to find a way to be together.
This is such a hard-hitting and devastating novel but it has such heart, which gives it a beauty that I wasn’t expecting. I knew I was going to like this book before I even started reading it but I didn’t expect that I was going to love it quite as much as I did. I finished reading this a few days ago and I feel like my love for it is just grown stronger. I keep thinking about Tyler and hoping he’s okay. It’s a book that gave me so much more than I was expecting and it’s left its mark on my heart. I now want to read everything that Doug Johnstone has ever written!
Breakers is fast-paced, gritty and dark but there is hope at its centre. I found this novel impossible to put down and I’m in awe of how good it is. I highly recommend it, it’s absolutely brilliant!
This review was originally posted on my blog https://rathertoofondofbooks.com
frustratedlibrarian's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
kellylacey's review against another edition
5.0
I went into Breakers expecting something quite extraordinary after reading all the reviews and book blogs, the bar was set very high. I finished Breakers exhausted, humbled and truly satisfied. Doug Johnstone has done something truly unique in capturing the very essence of a place and portraying it so honestly and bringing it to life like it was a character and not a place.
We meet Tyler who lives in Niddrie with his junkie mum and his little sister Bean. Tyler's lifestyle is tragic and unfortunately true to life for some people. For me, I had the bonus of knowing the places in the book. I have grown up around them, I live in Musselburgh where the character Flick is from. Niddrie has always in my almost 40 years been known as the "rough" area. I remember dating a boy in high school and that got short shift when my parents knew he lived in Niddrie. Over recent years it has had a huge overhaul and an influx of immigrants have moved into the area. Niddrie Mains was demolished, and private houses went up. There is a difference as you drive through it you can see it, but the past still lingers almost haunting the suburb. There is still trouble in the area and it’s not somewhere you would want to go alone on a nighttime. Niddrie plays a huge role in Breakers and Doug Johnstone captures it perfectly.
Tyler meets Flick who is worlds away from his Niddrie life. Even though it is only about twenty minutes away. She lives in Musselburgh and attends Loretto private school which is a real place and is about a fifteen walk from my house. Growing up
I went to the local grammar school we would never have spoken or hung about with the Loretto girls. Even now, the schools don't mix even though they are very close to each other. Tyler and Flick's worlds colliding has drastic consequences. I enjoyed the balance of the two extremes. Rich and very poor and the dynamic of them coming together was genius.
My journey with Breakers was so enjoyable I didn't want it to stop. It is so realistic, and the characters are so believable. Little Bean has a starring role and I think everyone who reads the book will fall in love with her. The whole reading journey you are disgusted and disturbed that people live like this. It really is one step up from being completely homeless. Living in squalor with little to no food and surrounded with junkies and dangerous people. It feels hopeless and that is the very core of the book. Feeling stuck with the inability to see change or have hope.
Breakers deserves all praise it has been given and then a whole lot more. Doug Johnstone has achieved what many authors attempt but fail to do. He has written fresh and original Scottish crime fiction that has the potential for an amazing series.
Breakers is disturbing, dangerous and heart-breaking, more, please!
We meet Tyler who lives in Niddrie with his junkie mum and his little sister Bean. Tyler's lifestyle is tragic and unfortunately true to life for some people. For me, I had the bonus of knowing the places in the book. I have grown up around them, I live in Musselburgh where the character Flick is from. Niddrie has always in my almost 40 years been known as the "rough" area. I remember dating a boy in high school and that got short shift when my parents knew he lived in Niddrie. Over recent years it has had a huge overhaul and an influx of immigrants have moved into the area. Niddrie Mains was demolished, and private houses went up. There is a difference as you drive through it you can see it, but the past still lingers almost haunting the suburb. There is still trouble in the area and it’s not somewhere you would want to go alone on a nighttime. Niddrie plays a huge role in Breakers and Doug Johnstone captures it perfectly.
Tyler meets Flick who is worlds away from his Niddrie life. Even though it is only about twenty minutes away. She lives in Musselburgh and attends Loretto private school which is a real place and is about a fifteen walk from my house. Growing up
I went to the local grammar school we would never have spoken or hung about with the Loretto girls. Even now, the schools don't mix even though they are very close to each other. Tyler and Flick's worlds colliding has drastic consequences. I enjoyed the balance of the two extremes. Rich and very poor and the dynamic of them coming together was genius.
My journey with Breakers was so enjoyable I didn't want it to stop. It is so realistic, and the characters are so believable. Little Bean has a starring role and I think everyone who reads the book will fall in love with her. The whole reading journey you are disgusted and disturbed that people live like this. It really is one step up from being completely homeless. Living in squalor with little to no food and surrounded with junkies and dangerous people. It feels hopeless and that is the very core of the book. Feeling stuck with the inability to see change or have hope.
Breakers deserves all praise it has been given and then a whole lot more. Doug Johnstone has achieved what many authors attempt but fail to do. He has written fresh and original Scottish crime fiction that has the potential for an amazing series.
Breakers is disturbing, dangerous and heart-breaking, more, please!
kellyvandamme's review against another edition
5.0
Wow. Just wow. In a summer full of feeling somewhat let down by many of this year’s hyped books from major publishers, it’s an indie book that makes me feel this way. A wreck, gutted, yet somehow strangely hopeful. As opposed to the hyped book I’ve just finished that could not keep my attention for more than a chapter or two (seriously, I found myself pulling out weeds instead, not a great sign), Breakers grabbed me by the throat from the first page of the first chapter and I could not tear myself away. Moreover, I didn’t want to.
Right off the bat it’s crystal clear where we’re at: at the fringes of society. Tyler, little more than a teenager himself, is the sole carer of his seven-year-old sister Bethany (Bean). Their mum is an addict, booze, pot, heroin, whatever she can get her hands on, and they have an older half-brother Barry and half-sister Kelly (same mum, different dad) who live in the same building. They live in poverty and make a living from crime. I’m sure there are loads of poor people who are upstanding citizens, who do their best every day, who work or maybe can’t work, and for whatever reason have problems making ends meet. Tyler is trying to be that guy. But with a mum who spends every cent she gets on drugs and alcohol and an older brother who practically forces him to come robbing houses with him, there’s really not that much he can do. On the bright side, the burglaries mean that every now and then he can hide some cash from his brother so he can buy food or other necessities, or he can nick some trinkets for Bean, like a stuffed panda bear, or things like soap. I couldn’t not feel for Tyler and especially Bean. They’re good kids, smart, deserving of a better mum, better siblings. I wanted to jump between the sentences, and hug them both. They’re stuck in this dead-end situation, there’s no hope for the future. I hated seeing a seven-year-old so jaded. Bean is a smart girl, Tyler wants to protect her from seeing their mum in drunken or drug-induced stupors but Bean knows what’s what and no girl that age should have that kind of smarts. And then a job goes wrong: while Tyler and his older half-siblings are robbing a fancy house, the owner comes home and Barry stabs her. It turns out that the woman in question is actually the wife of Edinburgh’s biggest crime lord and Tyler finds himself caught between a rock and various hard places: his coked-up brother, the police and the crime lord. And then he meets Flick, a rich kid, but not quite the goody two-shoes that she’s meant to be. She brings hope, hope for love, hope for some kind of salvation, but what when Barry finds out?
The crime aspect of Breakers is truly chilling. Yes there is violence and lots of it, but it isn’t cheap, it isn’t overly gory, it’s just very realistic and that makes it worse. I’m sure everyone knows someone whose house has been broken into. Coming home and finding your house broken into, your stuff taken, that’s bad enough, but just imagine coming home just a few minutes too early, catching the burglars red-handed.
Barry scared the living daylights out of me. He’s creepy enough when he’s sober but half the time he’s coked up and all the time he’s completely off his rocker, and the way he treats his siblings is just ugh *shudders* (what an eloquently worded review this is turning out to be, isn’t it 🙄)
Breakers is gritty and dark and harrowing, and it broke my heart and it make me feel very lucky to be where I am, on the one hand, but also kind of like an entitled rich kid on the other (while I’m nothing of the sort, trust me). However, Breakers is not only dark and confrontational, it’s also about love. About a boy with so much love for his little sister, doing whatever needs to be done to protect her, psychologically as well as physically, and that little sister loving him back. (Doug Johnstone really did an amazing job portraying Bean, I love that girl to bits!) It’s about finding love and compassion where you’d least expect it, it’s about forgiveness. It’s about being in the gutter but looking at the stars, and maybe, just maybe, there is some hope for the next generation.
I loved this book so much. I finished it in a day and wanted to dive right back in the second I’d finished it. I have tried to express how deeply I feel about Breakers and it characters, to explain its layeredness, its awesomeness, and I feel like I failed miserably. I’ve never been to Scotland, I’ve never been in a criminal environment, but I was there with Breakers.
Very highly recommended.
Right off the bat it’s crystal clear where we’re at: at the fringes of society. Tyler, little more than a teenager himself, is the sole carer of his seven-year-old sister Bethany (Bean). Their mum is an addict, booze, pot, heroin, whatever she can get her hands on, and they have an older half-brother Barry and half-sister Kelly (same mum, different dad) who live in the same building. They live in poverty and make a living from crime. I’m sure there are loads of poor people who are upstanding citizens, who do their best every day, who work or maybe can’t work, and for whatever reason have problems making ends meet. Tyler is trying to be that guy. But with a mum who spends every cent she gets on drugs and alcohol and an older brother who practically forces him to come robbing houses with him, there’s really not that much he can do. On the bright side, the burglaries mean that every now and then he can hide some cash from his brother so he can buy food or other necessities, or he can nick some trinkets for Bean, like a stuffed panda bear, or things like soap. I couldn’t not feel for Tyler and especially Bean. They’re good kids, smart, deserving of a better mum, better siblings. I wanted to jump between the sentences, and hug them both. They’re stuck in this dead-end situation, there’s no hope for the future. I hated seeing a seven-year-old so jaded. Bean is a smart girl, Tyler wants to protect her from seeing their mum in drunken or drug-induced stupors but Bean knows what’s what and no girl that age should have that kind of smarts. And then a job goes wrong: while Tyler and his older half-siblings are robbing a fancy house, the owner comes home and Barry stabs her. It turns out that the woman in question is actually the wife of Edinburgh’s biggest crime lord and Tyler finds himself caught between a rock and various hard places: his coked-up brother, the police and the crime lord. And then he meets Flick, a rich kid, but not quite the goody two-shoes that she’s meant to be. She brings hope, hope for love, hope for some kind of salvation, but what when Barry finds out?
The crime aspect of Breakers is truly chilling. Yes there is violence and lots of it, but it isn’t cheap, it isn’t overly gory, it’s just very realistic and that makes it worse. I’m sure everyone knows someone whose house has been broken into. Coming home and finding your house broken into, your stuff taken, that’s bad enough, but just imagine coming home just a few minutes too early, catching the burglars red-handed.
Barry scared the living daylights out of me. He’s creepy enough when he’s sober but half the time he’s coked up and all the time he’s completely off his rocker, and the way he treats his siblings is just ugh *shudders* (what an eloquently worded review this is turning out to be, isn’t it 🙄)
Breakers is gritty and dark and harrowing, and it broke my heart and it make me feel very lucky to be where I am, on the one hand, but also kind of like an entitled rich kid on the other (while I’m nothing of the sort, trust me). However, Breakers is not only dark and confrontational, it’s also about love. About a boy with so much love for his little sister, doing whatever needs to be done to protect her, psychologically as well as physically, and that little sister loving him back. (Doug Johnstone really did an amazing job portraying Bean, I love that girl to bits!) It’s about finding love and compassion where you’d least expect it, it’s about forgiveness. It’s about being in the gutter but looking at the stars, and maybe, just maybe, there is some hope for the next generation.
I loved this book so much. I finished it in a day and wanted to dive right back in the second I’d finished it. I have tried to express how deeply I feel about Breakers and it characters, to explain its layeredness, its awesomeness, and I feel like I failed miserably. I’ve never been to Scotland, I’ve never been in a criminal environment, but I was there with Breakers.
Very highly recommended.
btpbookclub's review against another edition
4.0
Oh My Heart! Where do I start? I easily devoured this within a day! Such a brilliant story and I will explain why…
TYLER! Oh my. He’s trying his bloody hardest and is the best big brother ever to little bean. My heart. Those two have such a cute, special bond. I felt Tyler was trying to protect everyone around him and make everyone happy which sometimes isn’t possible. He’s a good lad really bringing his sister up.
BEAN! The youngest of the family, the cutest, innocent and doesn’t have a clue about the world she is in really. What she does know is that she loves her brother Tyler more than anyone. We all need someone to lean on. Such a sweet little girl.
Now don’t get me started on Barry and Kelly, especially Barry. While reading this book I found my anger building up and hating Barrys character to the point well, he got what he deserved. Such a horrible character. Grr. Kelly wasn’t much better either but I reckon there was another side to her underneath.
Brilliantly written, thrilling, fast paced and a page turner of a read which I actually didn’t put down for once well, until the end. A happy outcome for all. I actually got so emotionally attached to some of these character specifically Bean and Tyler, theyre both still kids. I awarded a well deserved four stars and would highly recommend.
TYLER! Oh my. He’s trying his bloody hardest and is the best big brother ever to little bean. My heart. Those two have such a cute, special bond. I felt Tyler was trying to protect everyone around him and make everyone happy which sometimes isn’t possible. He’s a good lad really bringing his sister up.
BEAN! The youngest of the family, the cutest, innocent and doesn’t have a clue about the world she is in really. What she does know is that she loves her brother Tyler more than anyone. We all need someone to lean on. Such a sweet little girl.
Now don’t get me started on Barry and Kelly, especially Barry. While reading this book I found my anger building up and hating Barrys character to the point well, he got what he deserved. Such a horrible character. Grr. Kelly wasn’t much better either but I reckon there was another side to her underneath.
Brilliantly written, thrilling, fast paced and a page turner of a read which I actually didn’t put down for once well, until the end. A happy outcome for all. I actually got so emotionally attached to some of these character specifically Bean and Tyler, theyre both still kids. I awarded a well deserved four stars and would highly recommend.