Julia Tannenbaum

"Sickness is familiar; sickness is safe; sickness is expectable. Living, on the other hand, is scary as hell."

This book hit hard and I mean that in the best way possible. Grace is one of the strongest narrators I've encountered in a long time even though she spends most of the novel doubting her strength.

I loved how real this felt. It didn't hold back to spare anyone's feelings and rightly so. Eating disorders are real and I love seeing another book on the topic. It also did a great job representing the LGBTQ community!

One of my favorite things about Breaking Free was seeing Grace and her mother grow together. Their relationship isn't always perfect but you see them both try to make it work and in the end, it really does.

You also get a firsthand account of what it's like to be in treatment and recovering from an eating disorder.

The only thing I didn't love was the references to overweight people BUT Grace is a teenager with an eating disorder and the fact that she sees overweight people as something to fear is realistic.

Apparently this is a sequel, too! I wouldn't have realized without reading reviews because it really stands on its own quite well. Now I'm off to get the first one.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this arc. I thoroughly enjoyed it!… (mere)