Why We Broke Up - by Daniel Handler

This book is a departure from Handler's work for younger readers under the pen-name of Lemony Snicket. I found The Series of Unfortunate Events to be delightful from the very first sentence, so it took a little while for Min and Ed's romance to draw me in. I read those books with my children, and I have particularly fond memories and inside jokes about these books to this day. Having said that, I don't think this sort of nostalgia for childhood books will affect the teen reader in the same way, even if they do happen to connect Handler and Snicket.

The "hook" that will draw readers into this book is the box of objects Min is returning to Ed, mementos of their failed romance. I think this works as an effective way to tell a story. As we are shown each object in turn in a full page illustration, Min recounts the object's history and its part in the romance and subsequent break-up. She ends most chapters with "and this is why we broke up", invoking and explaining the title of the book. This formulaic set up works well to piece the story together into a coherent whole. It also works nicely because we notice when the formula is broken, as in the instance of the "Real Recipes of Tinseltown" that Ed and Min find on their early morning trip to Tip Top Goods, when Min writes, "I hate to give it back to you, this complicated thing, it's why we stayed together"(p. 142).

While I am not one to insist upon books teaching lessons or having a moral . . . a good story needs neither, this book does provide an interesting look at how teens (and girls especially, I think) can lose themselves in their relationships. They forget what gave them joy before finding their new partner. They invest all of themselves into the new person, ignoring,  old friends and interests. This loss of identity is especially bleak when the relationship ends, as we see in Min's tirade of self-hatred that goes on for almost three pages (pp. 335-337). Thinking back to Levithan's definition of YA, her romance with Ed in some ways interrupts who she was becoming and enter his world, where she is bored and unhappy a lot of the time.

This is a good book to have in a YA/teen collection because it deals with teen relationships, love, sex, friendship, cliques. In Min, we have a heroine who doesn't always make the right choices, but does have a strong support system in her group of friends, especially Al, who, it seems, is always there to pick up the pieces.

Problems this book might encounter
The book portrays teenage sexuality as well as underage drinking.

References

Handler, D. (2012). Why we broke up. Harper Collins: Toronto.