Review: All the Broken Pieces by Cindi Madsen

Publisher: Entangled Teen

Pages: 304

Received: Was given an e-galley from the publisher

Release Date: December 11, 2012
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Goodreads Synopsis:

What if your life wasn’t your own?

Liv comes out of a coma with no memory of her past and two distinct, warring voices inside her head. Nothing, not even her reflection, seems familiar. As she stumbles through her junior year, the voices get louder, insisting she please the popular group while simultaneously despising them. But when Liv starts hanging around with Spencer, whose own mysterious past also has him on the fringe, life feels complete for the first time in, well, as long as she can remember.

Liv knows the details of the car accident that put her in the coma, but as the voices invade her dreams, and her dreams start feeling like memories, she and Spencer seek out answers. Yet the deeper they dig, the less things make sense. Can Liv rebuild the pieces of her broken past, when it means questioning not just who she is, but what she is?

My Review:

This book had an interesting premise, Olivia wakes up in a hospital with no memory of her past and what happened to put her in this situation. Add to all that, Olivia now has two voices in her head that are warring with one another and makes Olivia's decisions more difficult.

This story has a great mystery aspect to it, Olivia's parents are very protective of her and have up and moved her to this new town where no one knows her so that her life before remains a mystery. It was interesting how Madsen added the voices into the story, really making readers wonder what happened to Olivia in the accident that has made her like this. The dreams that Olivia has every so often is a really great build-up to the big reveal at the end, which though I saw coming was still a bit shocking.

The best part of this was the interactions between Olivia and Spencer, this romance is slow building  they have this adorable love-hate relationship that grows over time into an adorable friendship. Spencer is known as the bad boy but you can tell right away that there is more to him (a bit of a cliche in books, but I still enjoyed it). The one thing I did find was that once they became friends there was still a little too much of the on-again, off-again happening, it seemed like the characters were a little bi-polar with their feelings.

All in all, I did enjoy the story, Madsen added in a great mystery element and a really adorable romance (that wasn't immediate love at first sight can't get enough of each other type of thing). Though a lot of pieces of the story give away the idea of what happened to Olivia, it was still an interesting read with a really great premise!