Book Review | The Breakaway by Jennifer Weiner
If you’re thinking about checking out book yourself, don’t worry about spoilers. The first part of my reviews are always spoiler-free so you can see if the book is your cup of tea. After a quick summary and a basic review, I’ll give a spoiler warning and do a deep dive into my praises and criticisms for The Breakaway.
Info about author
The Breakaway by Jennifer Weiner
Content Warning
I always like to give a quick content warning for any sensitive topics. These are some content warnings for The Breakaway:
Blood.
Bicycle accident.
Disordered eating.
Fatphobia.
Intimate scenes.
Quick Synopsis
The Breakaway is an ensemble story about a caste of characters making a bike trip from New York to Niagara Falls. Our main character, Abby Stern, is a plus-sized woman who is struggling to find her place in the world. She’s not sure what she wants to do with her career, navigating a less-than-perfect relationship with her mother, and trying to find love. Abby finds herself dancing with a handsome man at a bachelorette party out of town, and decides to go home with him. She spends the night with Sebastian, and then sneaks away the next morning, thinking she’ll never see him again.
Two years later, she’s in a committed relationship with her childhood sweetheart, who asks her to move in with him. She’s feeling unsure about how to answer, and to delay having to give him an answer, she takes on a last-minute job as a bike tour leader. As they all gather up on the first day of the trip, Abby is shocked to see that her mother has joined, and not only has her mother joined, but Sebastian has reappeared.
Sebastian and Abby’s mother, combined with the interesting caste of characters, means nobody is going to arrive in Niagara Falls exactly as they left.
My Rating
Everybody has to come up with their own system for judging and rating books, and here’s mine:
One star: I couldn’t finish the book. (DNF)
Two stars: I struggled to finish, but I did.
Three stars: This book was okay and worth reading.
Four stars: I liked this book and I would recommend it to a friend.
Five stars: I’d read this book again, and it’s going on my favorites shelf.
My Rating Scale
By no means do I think this is a perfect rating system, but I had to come up with something that would help me avoid arbitrarily assigning ratings. This provides a solid guideline for rating qualifications.
I gave The Breakaway an four-star rating because I really liked it and I would recommend it to a friend, but I probably wouldn’t read it again. If you read the Breakaway and you really enjoyed it, you may also enjoy:
Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon
Once More With Feeling by Elissa Sussman
Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon
Summary
We’re now entering the spoiler-y part of this review. If you think The Breakaway sounds like your cup of tea, click away, read it, and come back to see if you agree or disagree with my critique. If you like the sound of the book but you don’t want to read it, don’t worry, I’ll give you the full rundown.
SPOILERS
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SPOILERS -
Summary
Breakaway starts with Abby Stern at a bachelorette party. We see her thinking about how she’s struggling to find a career that she enjoys, and also still struggling to maintain body positivity in her larger body.
“Abby had gotten used to being the largest girl in a group, but now she’d arrived at a point where she was both the largest and the least accomplished. This new development did not fill her heart with joy.”
While she’s at the bachelorrete party, they’re going out to clubs and bars, and she meets a handsome man. The two of them start dancing together and chatting, and she ends up going home with him. They have a great time together, they’re intimate, and he even makes her food and brings her pasta in bed. But, when she wakes up the next morning, she sneaks away and doesn’t leave her name or phone number so he can contact her.
She convinces herself that as a plus-sized woman, this man is more likely to look at her in the morning, without the lights of the club and a nice dress, and think that he made a mistake.
Two years later, Abby is in a comitted relationship with her childhood sweetheart, Mark. The two of them met at fat camps when they were younger, and since then Mark had a gastric bypass surgery. This means he has to follow a very strict diet that Abby doesn’t always want to go along with. He asks her to move in with him, and Abby feels she can see the entire future stretching out in front of her, pre-determined.
This makes her feel some hesitation, and to delay having to answer him, she accepts a job to be the leader for a bike tour that will take about two weeks. It starts in New York and ends in Niagara Falls.
She’s nervous about being the leader because as a plus-sized woman, she worries that people won’t take her seriously and respect the experience she has as a biker. This worry only grows when she realizes one of the bikers in her group is Sebastian, the man she hooked up with two years before. Sebastian still clearly has an interest in Abby.
He’s not the only thing making her nervous, however, as her mom shows up right at the end, adding to her stress. Abby’s mom is the reason she went to fat camp as a kid. The two of them have struggled to connect because of her mom’s obsession with thinness and diet culture.
On the second day of the trip, a tik-tok goes viral. It’s a woman talking about how she and most of her friends realize that they have all been with Sebastian. This starts to spread with more and more women commenting on how they’ve all been with Sebastian.
Sebastian worries about this and doesn’t want Abby to see it because he doesn’t her to see it, as he doesn’t want her to see him negatively. Abby, of course, does see the video. Though the two of them had started to grow a bit closer, Sebastian’s new internet fame leads to a bit of a fight during a group dinner.
Sebastian points out that Abby and Mark don’t have a lot in common, and implies that they must have a pretty boring relationship. Abby says that he can’t know what he’s talking about, as he’s never actually been in a serious relationship.
In the middle of this strife, we have a teen girl named Morgan in the group, who is using the bike ride as a way to get an abortion. She’s from Ohio, where she can’t get an abortion without parental consent. Her plan is to veer off during a portion of the ride, get the procedure, and come back to the ride without her mom finding out.
Her dad is a pastor, and her mom has been known to agree with pro-life sentiments, so Morgan is really nervous and worried that if her parents did know, they may force her to give birth.
Morgan enlists the help of Andrew, another teen boy who is also in the group. When she asks for his help, he goes to his own mom and explains the situation in hypothetical terms. The mom, Kayla, figures out pretty quickly who the subject of this story is. Kayla decides she’s going to try and help Morgan, even though it seems scary, and that Morgan’s parents may be able to take legal action.
Kayla loops Abby into the plan, and they all come up with a plan to get Morgan to the clinic. It’s pouring down rain, so the plan is that the van will take them in groups. They plan to get Morgan’s mom on the first van ride, telling Morgan’s mom that Kayla will take her son and Morgan to the university.
Abby isn’t able to help with the plan because Sebastian decides he’s going to ride even though it’s pouring down rain. As the tour guide, Abby must go if anyone wants to ride. The two of them go out in the rain, with Sebastian riding ahead, not wanting to be near her because of their fight.
Sebastian, of course, crashes his bike, and when Abby goes to help patch him up, they end up kissing in the rain.
Morgan, having gotten the pills she needs to induce the abortion, hides out in the hotel gym because she has pills she needs to let melt in her mouth for 30 minutes. When Morgan’s mom can’t find her, she starts to freak out, going as far as to call the cops.
While this is going on, Morgan’s mom starts to get a few inklings that the others know more than she does. It worries her further, and when Morgan comes out of hiding, she goes up to the room with her mom, who demands to know what’s going on. Morgan gives up and tells her mom everything.
Her mom reveals that she also had an abortion, which suprises Morgan, who had always heard her parents sharing pro-life ideas. They would say that getting an abortion was murder, “period.”
The two of them agree not to tell Morgan’s dad, and her mom stays to help take care of her.
Sebastian and Abby get a lot closer, spending a few nights together on the trip. To everyone’s surprise, Mark, who is still Abby’s boyfriend, is waiting for her outside their next accomodation. Because of Sebastian’s internet fame, a picture of him and Abby circulates, which draws Mark for the confrontation.
As the two of them talk about it, Abby admits that he’s been cheating. Mark says they can work through it, but Abby says that she thinks it’s a better idea to end the relationship.
Abby surprises everyone by leaving the next morning. She realizes she wants to start a club for girls to ride bikes, experience freedom, and potentially get the same kind of help Morgan needed. During this time, Abby also has a conversation with her mother. Her mother reveals that she was also fat when she was a teenager, and Abby learns that her mother tried everything—all the diets, exercise, and programs—and still couldn’t lose the weight. She ended up getting a gastric bypass surgery, which is why she follows such a strict diet.
Abby communicates with her mom, telling her that the fat camps weren’t okay. The encounter is kind of rocky, and doesn’t resolve much, but it does seem they’re on the path to a better relationship.
At the end of the novel, Sebastian returns after a year of working on himself, and he and Abby get the happy-ever-after they deserve.
Deep Dive
Praise
The first thing I really enjoyed about this book was the strong thematic elements. Focus on reproductive rights, fatphobia (especially towards women), mother-daughter relationships, and diet culture created a strong feminist theme throughout the story.
The bicycle has long been seen as a symbol of the feminist movement. It gave women the freedom to go where they wanted, to gather in groups and organize. In this novel, we see women using the bicycle as a way to gain autonomy and make their own choice.
We see Abby discovering her purpose, Morgan getting the help she needs, and both pairs of mothers and daughters using the trip to repair their relationships.
Mother-daughter relationships are another strong element in this one. Abby and her mom struggle with her mother’s fatphobia, while Morgan battles with her parents’ controlling nature.
Abby’s perception of the world nad also how other people perceive her is heavily influenced by her experience as a plus-sized woman. We see her doubt her self-worth, which affects her relationships with other people, especially her romantic partners.
Despite being an avid, experienced biker, she still worries that the members of her group won’t repspect her as a guide because she’s a bigger woman.
I enjoyed the connection between Sebastian and Abby. The book did a good job of maintaining chemistry between the two without becoming cringe-y.
Criticism
There were some times I felt Abby and Sebastian got awkward toward the end of the book.
The pacing changes pretty drastically near the end of the book. During the trip, we see a fast pace, with things happening each day. I understood that both characters needed time to grow before entering into a relationship, but the ending just felt under-developed.
I also wanted to see the book explore Sebastian and his sexual life a bit more. It came really close to exploring how society views men and women differently when it comes to being promiscuous, but it didn’t quite get there.
Having your personal life blown up for the internet the way Sebastian experiences in the book would be very intense and traumatic. He insists several times that he didn’t do anything wrong, and that he communicated clearly with every woman.
I don’t think there’s a clear black and white here, and things can get messy, but I would have liked to see the book explore this idea a bit more. It felt like some of the characters, if not the book itself, felt that Sebastian was “getting what he deserved.”
All in all, I really enjoyed The Breakaway. I loved the plus-sized representation and feminist themes.
