An important collection of stories about teens with a range of disabilities. Anthologies aren't usually my thing but I appreciated seeing disabled teens treated with respect.

This book is an anthology featuring authors with differing abilities. Many of these differing abilities are invisible- such as Crohn's disease , autism, etc. The message that these "dis" -abilities have not broken those featured is strong.

I’ve definitely read more short story collections in 2018 than in previous years, and while I’ve found some great new authors I’m excited to read more from, I’ve also realized how long it takes me to read short story collections and I rarely love them. Unfortunately, such was the case with Unbroken edited by Marieke Nijkamp, which includes 13 stories featuring disabled teens.

I reviewed each of these stories as I read them (you can find that here) so I won’t go into too much detail, but basically, there were ones I liked, ones I didn’t care for, but mostly I didn’t have an emotional connection to the stories, it just felt like I was being told things. As a result, overall it was just an okay collection. That said, my favourites were Dhonielle Clayton and Corinne Duyvis. I didn’t expect Unbroken to be such a mix across genres (contemporary, science fiction, etc) so that was interesting, and a great reminder that diverse characters can feature in any story, but I think I just prefer to stay immersed in one story, or at least one genre. I don’t know, I wanted to like Unbroken better than I did, but at least I found a couple authors I am interested in reading more from.

Unbroken is a collection of short stories about teens with a variety of disabilities written by autors who also have disabilities. There's a good amount of diversity represented here too. Most of them are good, but I did find myself losing interest a little bit in the middle of the book. It might just be me, but in some of the stories it wasn't quite clear what the disability was.
My favorites were "The Leap and the Fall" by Kayla Whaley and "One, Two, Three" by Corinne Duyvis (It's called "A Curse, A Kindness" in the official version.) I'll be checking out more of their work.
I received my copy for free from NetGalley but all opinions are my own. I would recommend this book to teens with disabilities, anyone who wants to diversify their reading and people who like short story collections.

To be as upfront and transparent as possible, I feel it's important to state that I expected all of these stories to contain characters that lived with physical disabilities. While there are some that include characters like this, most of them were about characters with, what I would call, mental illness. Obviously my idea of a disability isn't the same as someone else's. Not that mental illness isn't an important topic that needs to be discussed. But, moving on.

Like most anthologies, I enjoyed some stories far more than others. Sometimes the "disability" was discussed in such a way to leave me confused as to what it was. I think this is an important work. And while it has areas that are definitely in need of content revision, it says a lot that we're publishing works like this. It's a step in the right direction. Some of these stories deserve to be a novel, and I would jump on the chance to read more. Overall, though, I'd have to give this a 3.5. 

Stefanie Rae

Excellent variety of stories full of empathy that don't shy away from hard truths or thoughts. I was impressed to see the different conditions represented.

so dang glad books like this exist. just like most works like this, parts of it were amazing to me, others not as great. not each story is as strong as the others, but that's kinda of what you get with anthologies.

A gread mix of stories! Intersectional on so many axes, and a wide variety of genre. A great choice to hand your kids who are still thirsty for Wonder readalikes.

ARC provided by Netgalley and the publisher.

This was diverse. It was intersectional. It was an Own Voices collection. And it was great to read stories where individuals with disabilities are portrayed positively and actively and normally.

As with any short story collection, some stories will be more engaging to certain readers than others. (One of the things that makes these hard to shop during Reader’s advisory interactions.) For me, someone who lives daily with a fairly severe healing impairment (and never gets a great HH or deaf character in a book because they are always written by hearing authors) really missed that in this anthology.

This is going to speak to a certain population of teen readers. It’s going to make a difference. And it’s a strong short story collection to add to a Teen or YA library collection

I did receive a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

This was a really unique book! I've never read anything quite like it. Listed below is my rating of each individual short story.

Long road: 4
Britt and the Bike God: 4
The Leap and the Fall: 2
Per Aspera Ad Astra: 5
Found Objects: 1
Plus One: 3
The Day the Dragon Came: 4
Captain, My Captain: 3
Dear Nora James, You Know Nothing About Love: 4
A Play in Many Parts: 4
Ballad of Weary Daughters: 3
Mother Nature’s Youngest Daughter: 4
One, Two, Three: 4

The overall average of these ratings is close to 3.46. There were some books in here that I really enjoyed and one that I couldn't even stand to finish. Per Aspera Ad Astra was definitely my favorite. It featured a brilliantly smart girl locked inside her own head because of her anxiety. I loved reading about her struggle to overcome this mental disorder in an effort to save her family and city. I can't recall any swearing in this short story either, unlike in The Leap and the Fall, Found Objects, and Ballad of Weary Daughters. The swearing really took away from the stories and distracted me as a reader from the messages the authors were trying to get across. I couldn't even stand to finish Found Objects, it was told from such a weird viewpoint and I disliked the characters so much. I read about a third of it before skipping to the next book. Mother Nature's Youngest Daughter also had fantasy elements incorporated into it, yet this story had likable characters and a cool story line that kept me hooked. The Day the Dragon Came was also a good read. The only thing I didn't like about it was that the author never outright said the cause of her physical disability. Maybe it was hinted at somewhere, but I felt like this book and so many of the other ones would have been better if at some point the character's disability was written out so that the reader wouldn't have to guess what it was. One thing I did like about this book was that one of the characters was transgender. At least I think they were. It was vaguely hinted at in one line and I could completely have read it wrong, but if they were than cool! Many of these stories featured characters that were homosexual as well which made for an interesting viewpoint. Overall I enjoyed this book, some stories more than others. I would recommend it to a friend if asked.

As with most anthologies, it's a little hard to review them. Different authors, different themes, different genres. Some didn't really work for me, some I loved. Some were very moving, some bored me. Overall, I liked the anthology. I liked that it was own voices and I appreciated getting glimpses into lives with different challenges, things I may not be familiar with in my own experience. I think it's excellent that this book exists. I hope a lot of people read it. Broadening your own horizons and viewpoint of how others deal with the world around us can only be good. It's always a good thing to try to understand each other better. So, I think I'll give it 3 stars for the actual stories, some that touched me, some that didn't. And an extra star for seeing things from different perspectives and appreciating people for who they are.

Anthologies are pretty hit or miss for me. I usually like about half of the stories while not caring for the other half. This anthology was no different. I did, however, enjoy how diverse the stories were, not only in characters but in format and genre. There were definitely stories that I wish were longer. My favorites included: The Long Road by Heidi Heilig, The Leap and the Fall by Kayla Whaley, Captain, My Captain by Francisco X. Stork, and A Curse, A Kindness by Corinne Duyvis.
I received an ARC of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This anthology is a mix of contemporary fiction, fantasy and science fiction in a way that flows beautifully. Each of the 13 stories in the Unbroken anthology tells the story of a disabled person saving the world and living their lives the best they can.

Unbroken was an anthology I needed to read this week. All of these stories are written by ownvoices disabled authors, which is great. I loved that there was a variety of disabilities included, ranging from blindness to chronic pain to needing a power wheelchair to Bipolar II to autism. With its collection of bestselling authors like Heidi Heilig and Kody Keplinger, and some newer voices, I think this collection is stellar.

I received an eARC of Unbroken via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
It does need a general trigger warning for ableism throughout all of the stories. I’ll mention more specific warnings for each story I talk about. There was only one story that didn’t work for me, and that was because it was written as a play. There were several stories with a romantic subplot between two women, which was a wonderful surprise.

I’m going to talk a little bit about my favorite stories in the anthology.

Karuna Riazi’s Plus One tells the story of Hafsah, who refers to her major anxiety as “It.” She gets chosen to go on a pilgrimage to Hajj, and I loved the inclusion of how she desperately wanted It to go away with Allah’s help. It’s something that religious readers will be familiar with

Keah Brown’s Mother Nature’s Youngest Daughter dealt with a lot of ableist bullying towards a main character with cerebral palsy. It also allows her to get her revenge on her bullies in a way that didn’t harm anyone. I would love to see more exploration into this universe, or stories about her other siblings.

Kayla Whaley’s The Leap and the Fall was a mix of a horror story and a romance. The main character, like the author, uses a power wheelchair, and she uses it to her advantage. This is the first fiction story I’ve read by Whaley, and I cannot wait to see what she puts out next! This needs trigger warnings for possession, fire, and creepy circuses.

Corinne Duyvis’s A Curse, A Kindness featured an autistic main character who is cursed to grant three wishes to anyone who shows her a kindness. This sucks massively, because she meets the other main character when they literally run into each other in the grocery store. Sienna, our cursed MC, drops her chapstick in the process, and Mia returns it to her. This story needs a trigger warning for drowning and mentions of abusive parents.

Kristine Wyllys’s Ballad of Weary Daughters broke my heart more than a little as I recognized the author’s own struggles with her bipolar disorder in the story. This was a very personal story for Wyllys, which I know because we are mutuals on Twitter (though she is not active there anymore). I hope that readers will be as touched by the realities of her character’s experience on the reservation as I was. Wyllys is an Indigenous Woman of Color.

A reader seeking a story featuring a disabled main character would be able to easily find something that suited them in this anthology. I highly recommend it, and will be purchasing a copy for myself. You can do the same on Amazon or Indiebound!

It can be very difficult to rate short story anthologies because the content is so varied; however, I think that 3 stars would be my average rating. As expected, some stories I enjoyed more than others, but overall I was impressed by the diversity of characters represented. There were LGBT characters, gender fluid characters, persons of color, persons of different religions, and of course, all characters had some sort of disability, whether it be physical, intellectual, or emotional. Some of the genres covered were horror, science fiction, fantasy, and romance.

There were a couple stories where it was not clear what disability the character had. The descriptions were very ambiguous, and if you did not know that this was part of an anthology featuring youth with disabilities, you would probably miss the fact that a disability was even involved. It would have been nice if the authors had covered what inspired the characters they created in their short bios at the end of the anthology.

Another thing that really stood out to me is that the title of the anthology does not adhere to person first language (i.e. Stories Starring Disabled Teens vs. Stories Starring Teens with Disabilities). Admittedly, I am very aware of this distinction due to a training I received at work, so perhaps it does not stand out to others the way it does to me.

I enjoyed this title quite a bit. I thought most of the stories would be realistic, but there's some fantasy mixed in there too. Some of the stories were quite abstract, which may present a problem for some of my readers. As someone who has developed some disabilities in the past few years due to an autoimmune disorder, I found myself able to relate to many of the characters and was wowed by the way some of these authors described the pain associated with having a disability, whether mental or physical. I know some of my students will be able to relate also. I will recommend this one.

In this entire collection, I only came across one story I just felt 'meh' about, and that is a great ratio. These are stories about characters with disabilities and the authors and characters are incredibly diverse. Hooray!

The disabilities are varied and include physical, emotional, and mental. The stories encourage the reader to think outside of the little boxes we fit people in.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to love this anthology more, but I only really liked Britt and the Bike God. All of these stories were super short and most of them would've qualified as flash fiction, not a short story. I wasn't really invested in any of them. I was just dropped into a lot of worlds and I felt very unsteady. There was either too much action and no build up or vice versa. I just really wish that these stories were more developed and thought out. These authors need voices and these kinds of stories need told, but none of these stories were told in a way that I liked reading.

In the past few years, YA lit has really raised the bar of its anthology game. Marieke Nijkamp’s anthology, Unbroken, is no exception of this trend, with its collection of stories about disabled teens by a diverse range of voices in YA.

My favorite part of this smart, engaging anthology is that it takes the broadest possible definition of disability, including stories of teens with physical disabilities, chronic illnesses, intellectual disabilities and mental illnesses. To include such a range is to make a statement that the disabled community includes this broad range and welcomes teens (and all readers) that experience these various forms of disability as valid. I also loved how this anthology showed the mental and emotional aspects of physical disability and the physical aspects of mental illnesses.

Along the idea of diversity, Unbroken also features a diversity of genres. It was fun to read contemporary, sci-fi, fantasy and paranormal stories all in the same book, united by this umbrella of characters who are not defined by their disability but rather persevere and find happiness and overcome various forms of adversity from figuring out how to talk to a cute boy to saving their planet from a destructive attack.

I also loved the queer representation in this anthology. Kayla Whaley wrote a kick ass paranormal f/f story told from the POV of a girl who uses a wheelchair. Fox Benwell’s story is written in the format of a play and features a chronically ill non-binary MC. Corinne Duyvis wrote a tender speculative f/f story featuring autistic representation.

There was representation of people of color as well. Heidi Heilig, William Alexander, Francisco X. Stork, Dhonielle Clayton and Karuna Riazi all have people of color as main characters. A particular standout is Karuna Riazi’s story about a Muslim girl struggling with mental illness who takes the hajj with her family.

All of the stories in this collection are so strongly voiced, so filled with emotion and action. Each one was a joy to read and left me wanting more by the end (which is my biggest frustration with anthologies--I get so invested in all the characters). For abled readers, this book is a must-read in order to serve as a window into the lived experiences of people with a variety of disabilities. For disabled readers, I hope that reading this book proves to be as validating an experience as it was for me.

I struggle with anxiety, depression and an eating disorder, and I felt seen by this book. I connected so strongly with Katherine Locke’s story about a girl who struggles with debilitating anxiety that affects every aspect of her anxiety. Even though my eating disorder is more mental than physical, I related to Dhonielle Clayton’s story about a girl with IBS who’s skeptical about love.

As an overall work, Unbroken is so timely and important. These are voices in YA that you need to read and support. These are such well-written, beautiful stories and voices that deserve to be lifted up and celebrated.

I received a copy of this for a fair and honest review. I love reading anthologies. It allows one to hear from many different voices with some common theme. In a world where we need more diverse book this book is welcomed. It is 13 stories of disabled teens. That is not something that you will find much for no one really wants to talk about it. I am glad that I came across this book. I mean it has it issues but not enough where I could not finish it. I this is was a brave and bold choice and enjoyed the stories. Something I will definitely will read again when I need to be inspired.

A solid short story collection, with the #ownvoices element adding to the realism of each of them. As always, there were some hits and some misses but overall it's a good collection.