When I was in fifth grade I read every single book in Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortuntate Events in the span of a couple months. I didn’t think about Snicket again until I read some of his writings on the recent Wall Street happenings and the Occupy movements. “Lemony Snicket” is actually a pseudonym for author Daniel Handler, and after a little bit of research I decided to read some of his other books.  Why We Broke Up is Handler’s debut novel under his real name and I was excited to see if it held up to his works I read when I was younger.

The book is written in a letter format from an offbeat high school junior Minerva, Min for short, to her ex-boyfriend Ed, the star of the basketball team. From the start it sounds like the stereotypical young adult love story, and in many ways it was, but the letter format and the emotion seeping through the reasons Min gives for breaking up with Ed makes it unique.

Even though the book was interesting, and I really liked the style of writing, it wasn’t one of those books I couldn’t put down. I read it over a couple weeks and read about 15-20 pages a day. There’s very few paragraph breaks, and while that seems like something that’s not that big of a deal, it’s tiring to keep up with three page-long paragraphs.

Some of the reviews I read on Amazon said that Min was a very unrealistic high school student and that it made the book weaker as a whole. I disagree with that. Even though Min is very mature for her age, having realistic expectations and very sophisticated interests (such as being a French cinema aficionado) I know several kids who have similar mindsets to her.

I would recommend Why We Broke Up as a really good book for a rainy day, or one to keep with you, just so you have something that’s relatively light to read at all times. I do hope that Handler writes more books in this style as opposed to his Lemony Snicket style, because he definitely does have a wide range talent for writing.