Title: Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend
Author: Katie Finn
Series: Broken Hearts & Revenge #1
Genre: YA Contemporary
Format: Hardcover, 339 pages
Release Date: May 13th 2014
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Source: ARC received from publisher in exchange for an honest review

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Summer, boys, and friendships gone sour. This new series has everything that perfect beach reads are made of!

Gemma just got dumped and is devastated. She finds herself back in the Hamptons for the summer—which puts her at risk of bumping into Hallie, her former best friend that she wronged five years earlier. Do people hold grudges that long?

When a small case of mistaken identity causes everyone, including Hallie and her dreamy brother Josh, to think she’s someone else, Gemma decides to go along with it.

Gemma's plan is working (she's finding it hard to resist Josh), but she's finding herself in embarrassing situations (how could a bathing suit fall apart like that!?). Is it coincidence or is someone trying to expose her true identity? And how will Josh react if he finds out who she is?

Katie Finn hits all the right notes in this perfect beginning to a new summer series: A Broken Hearts & Revenge novel.


One thing i do not like to read in YA is when the main character is solely focused on having a boyfriend, and not having one is the end of the world. So when I opened Broken Hearts, and saw that Gemma, the main character was talking about having the best boyfriend, and not having one would be a disaster, i knew I was not going to enjoy this book as much as i wanted to.

The one thing about contemporary YA that I love so much is the fact that you can do anything. There are many different stories you can tell with very different characters. But with this book i found that the story was one I had read many times, and honestly I was a bit bored by it. It did not help that I figured out the entire story from the very beginning because I knew that everything that was happening was going to lead to the reveal at the end. And since I pretty much knew what the reveal was, it wasn't that great an ending for me. There was one aspect of the end that did shock me, but honestly it wasn't enough for me to enjoy the beginning and middle of the book any more.

The one thing I did like during the story was the love story between Gemma and Josh. It was very sweet and innocent at the beginning, but it was very slow moving. And i thought that was great to read because I hate the insta-love that seems to happen often and I really liked their story.

Character are very important to any novel and connecting with the main character is crucial for me, and honestly I did not connect with Gemma as much as I wanted to. I didn't get why she was so keen on keeping up with the facade of who she is, she knew it would blow up in her face at some point, so keeping it up for as long as she did made no sense to me. I also didn't understand the reason for some of the secondary characters. Although they were fun to read at times, i found that most of them were 2-dimentional and had very little purpose to the story.

Overall this book has so much potential and i enjoyed parts of its story, but ultimately i struggled to connect with the characters and the story itself. I found that the end was cliched and predictable. This book was just not for me.