Making questionable decisions in The Breakup Lists

 

Adib Khorram is one of those authors that I think I just like. I remember the Darius the Great books tore a hole through my brain when I read them, so obviously I was going to read The Breakup Lists when it came out.

The blurb is pretty short, it says that when it comes to finding the cons in a relationship – his own or someone else’s – no one writes a better breakup list than Jackson. Some might call him a cynic, but Jackson prefers to think of himself as a realist. Which is why it’s good that he and Liam are just friends. But doth the stage manager protest too much? That’s all there is for the blurb, but there’s also a list on the back for Liam that reads: Liam is (probably) straight, actors and stage crew don’t mix, he’s too tall, (and too nice), and too good at acting, (love just leads to heartbreak anyway), Jackson’s sister is already falling for him. The bracketed ones are actually struck through on the book, but I didn’t know how the strike through option would translate to where I post these.

The first chapter opens with Jackson sat in the car with his sister, Jasmine, and pulls out a list of reasons why her ex sucks from one of his breakup lists before heading into school where his bestie, Bowie, meets him. This is when Liam turns up, expecting this smoothie from Jackson because one time Bowie called in sick, so Jackson gave it to Liam instead. Liam then tells Jackson he’s auditioning for the musical that Jackson is stage manager for. I feel like normally I would write more for what happens in the first few chapters, but for some reason with this book I didn’t. I say for some reason, I think the reason was I was far more focused on reading that actually writing anything.

Something I loved in this book was that since Jackson wears hearing aids, he mentions, basically immediately, that they’re not a magic cure for deafness and that he still misses things that people say sometimes. Sometimes, when there’s dialogue, it would just be replaced with “somethingsomething”, because Jackson wouldn’t be able to hear it. And I don’t know, as someone who only has one working ear and one that works at about 10%, it’s nice to read something like this, because, while I don’t have hearing aids, I struggle hearing where things are coming from. Like, if someone shouts my name, I cannot tell where it’s coming from.

Another little bit was that throughout the book, there were a bunch of words and phrases that were crossed out, and they were all there to show what Jackson is really thinking, compared to what he ends up saying to the reader. Now, I don’t know whether this was something that was intentional, but I think it was something that worked really well with Jackson being hard of hearing as well. Because he was hard of hearing, and because of the somethingsomething parts where Jackson would end up coming to his own conclusions about what he was hearing, there was a part of me that wondered whether this was some kind of connection. Like what he said was what he said, and the crossed out bits were what he really meant, sort of like we as the readers were meant to understand him a bit better.

Jackson’s sister is very obvious in her feelings for Liam. Meanwhile, Liam is friendly towards Jackson, but because Jackson knows Jasmine likes Liam, he immediately shuts everything down and pushes Liam towards Jasmine, so much so that they do end up dating, and then Jackson ends up miserable, because obviously he likes Liam but refuses to do anything about it. But in a good classic romance trope, Liam ends up breaking up with Jasmine, so she then ends up forcing Jackson to write a breakup list for his own friend, Liam, which was then one of those moments that I knew the second Jackson wrote Liam’s list that he was going to end up seeing it at some point during the book.

My thought process on what was going to happen the moment between Liam and Jasmine got together was proven correct. I’m not going to spoil everything, but the cover does have Jackson and Liam on it, so that kind of tells you what’s going to happen if you are able to use a singular brain cell – something difficult for me from time to time when I read. I will say, it did end up happening in a slightly different way from how I thought it would. My thought process was that while Liam and Jasmine were together, that perhaps Jackson would do something, maybe like either admit to Liam that he likes him or kiss him. Something like that. Something that would obviously make Jackson a bit of a garbage man in the situation or maybe even ruin the relationship. Then consequently, that would end up causing conflict with both Liam and Jasmine for Jackson. At least, that’s what I thought was going to happen.

Oh, throughout the book, Jackson is a theatre kid. I feel like this is something that I should mention. Not in a you need a warning kind of way, more in the way that it’s such a central thing to the book and I haven’t properly talked about it. Jackson is on the stage crew, originally because he auditioned for an acting role one time and didn’t get it so was immediately jaded by that but luckily found out he actually really loves being stage manager.

I did have a verbal shut up moment when I read this. One of those where I full on just told the book to physically shut up while I read. It came towards the very end of the book when the conflict was being resolved. I’m purposefully being vague here not to spoil anything, but it was one of those things that really reminded me why I enjoy romance books so much. It was the kind of thing where a bunch of small details that had been there throughout the book finally all came together and eventually became relevant for the later parts of the book.

And to be honest, I don’t think I have anything else to say about this book, even though I feel like what I’ve written is so little. I just really liked this book, and that’s all I’ve got to say, sorry if you wanted more. Definitely read it. It’s just another book that affirms that I really love Adib Khorram as an author.

Okay, bye!