a fast-moving but richly woven tale of family, politics, feminism, faith, romance and #HAES (health at every size)

One of the reasons I post so many rave reviews is that I know what I like. I’m very good at picking books I will enjoy. I figured I’d like “The Breakaway”; you really cannot go wrong with Jennifer Weiner. But I had no idea how much I would absolutely love this book.

I read the synopsis as a second-chance romance, but this book is so much more than that. The main character, Abby, agrees last-minute to lead a multi-day cycling trip through upstate New York. Her relationship with her boyfriend, Mark, is at a pivotal point — they’re two years in and talking about moving in together. Little did she know that Sebastian, a one-night stand she met shortly before getting together with Mark, would be on the trip.

Sounds like any other rom com, right? But there’s so much more to this book, including mother-daughter relationships, faith, politics and weight bias. There were multiple story lines that made this one difficult to put down — I was so invested in all of them.

The breakaway was a very interesting read. The main character definitely had a lot of issues that were unresolved in her life. It was interesting to watch her thought process through the event of the book. Great to have more books about body positivity.

I liked this book! I wouldn’t say it was my all time favorite read, but it was enjoyable overall! I give it three stars.

4.5 stars

Jennifer Weiner always find a way to incorporate relatable and often controversial topics into her stories, and in this case it is Abby Stern’s struggle with her weight. As a child she was forced to attend a weight-loss camp thanks to her diet-obsessed mother, but over the years she has come to accept her plus-size body. She also reconnects with Mark Medoff, another Camp Golden Hills attendee, and while they are on track to get married, she feels like something is off.

Abby receives an unexpected invitation to lead a cycling group from NYC to Niagara Falls, and it feels like to perfect time to reflect on what she really wants in life — and whether or not that includes Mark. Ironically, Sebastian, a man she’d had a one-night stand with two years ago, is part of her group, but Abby needs to stay focused and is determined to keep her distance. To make matters worse, her mother Eileen, the source of all her bodily insecurities, joined as a last minute addition.

This book digs deep into the lives of the characters that make this story so wonderful. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, and they need to make some life-altering decisions before they can finish their trek to Niagara Falls. Ultimately, it’s a blunt yet heartwarming reminder that your feelings are valid, and sometimes you have to rediscover your own self worth to undo the emotional damage that once controlled your every waking thoughts.

Highly recommend!

*Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing a copy of this book to review.*

Thank you NetGalley for the copy of The Breakaway by Jennifer Weiner.

This book was not for me. This was my first time reading something from this author. I was surprised at the bedroom scene with the one nightstand and then going back to your boyfriend.

I will always read everything by Jennifer Weiner. This is a must-read author for me and my mom. The Breakaway was a classic Jennifer Weiner!

The Breakaway
A Novel
by Jennifer Weiner

The Breakaway by Jennifer Weiner is a story about plus sized 33 year old Abby at a cross roads in her life faced with a very difficult situation about marrying her child hood sweetheart. In the mean time she welcomes the opportunity to lead a two week long bike cycling tour where she re-acquaints with a one night stand Sebastian.

I have loved every Weiner book I have read and I am so sad I didn’t devour this with gusto, or loved it as much as her other books. It’s still a very well told story, it just didn’t capture my complete attention to care much about the characters and their plight.

I still love Weiner and cannot wait for her other upcoming novels.

The Breakaway by Jennifer Weiner is the story of 33 year old Abby, a woman on the brink of marrying her childhood sweetheart - a man “perfect” on paper, but perhaps not perfect for Abby. When Abby, an avid biker, agrees to lead a 2 week long cycling tour, Sebastian, her “I can’t stop thinking about him” one night stand from two years ago, miraculously happens to be one of the riders on the trip. Oh, and Abby’s mother also surprises her as a rider. The mother Abby isn’t close to at all and also blames for all of her body insecurities that she’s still working through as a plus-sized young woman.

I generally really enjoy Weiner’s books but I think I was expecting a lot more substance to this book given how her last few books were a lot heavier than their covers let on. Weiner attempts to tackle a lot of topics in this book (body shaming, body acceptance, mother/daughter relationships, romance, abortions, and probably my favourite - that body size doesn’t have to dictate physical ability or endurance), but I found myself a little bored with the storyline at times.

There’s also a LOT of side characters in this book. I get it, the bike tour required participants, but it was a lot of people to keep track of and I never was able to keep them all straight. And while I appreciated what she was trying to do with one of the side stories with a young girl rider, it just felt out of place.

But most of all, I just never got attached to the love story between Abby and Sebastian. It felt like a stretch - serial womanizer is still head over heels for Abby whom he hasn’t seen in two years and is the one he’s pretty sure he is ready to settle down with? Nah. I love me a good over the top romance but this too felt out of place nestled amongst the other topics in this story.

Anyway! Not mad I read it, but definitely not my favourite of hers!

I have been a fan of Jennifer Weiner's since the beginning and feel like I have read this book already - just with a few differences. Of course the main character struggles with her weight and of course she finds love anyway. Rinse and repeat. Come up with something different why don't ya?

It took me forever to read this one and I’m in the middle of the road on it. I loved the second chance, the viral tik tok, and the bike trip. I did not love all the talk about losing weight or the mother/daughter combo on the bike ride. I ended up pairing the ARC with the audio from Libby and think that helped me enjoy it more!

The Breakaway was a bit of a sleeper for me. It didn’t grab me like Weiner’s books usually do. I liked it but I really wanted to love it. The characters are quirky and the messages throughout are well written. Abby is relatable and I admired her growth.

A solid read, just not my favourite by this author.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC. This was a good, but not great read. I loved the plus size representation. It was a light hearted fun read that people should pick up.

The story centers around Abby Stern, a 33-year-old woman who, despite having a seemingly content life with gig jobs, a bicycling club, and a boyfriend, feels something is amiss. The novel explores themes of love, family, friendship, secrets, and personal journeys.

Abby's character is portrayed as being at peace with her plus-size body, yet she harbors insecurities stemming from a lifetime of body shaming and societal pressures. The story gains complexity when Abby, leading a cycling trip from NYC to Niagara Falls, encounters Sebastian, a one-night stand from her past, and her critical mother, Eileen, joins the trip unexpectedly. This setup leads to a narrative that delves into mother-daughter dynamics, body positivity, mental health, and a woman's right to choose.

Weiner's storytelling is known for tackling tough topics inside highly readable page turners. Abby's journey is not just about romance; it's about self-discovery, confronting past traumas, and navigating complex relationships. I've read her books covering similar issues of body image, body positivity, bodily autonomy, body politics, etc, before but this one really hit home. Possibly because I've been reading a lot of Aubrey Gordon's work on anti-fat bias recently, but this story made me feel more sympathy for the roles our mothers play in handing down body image ideals and societal pressures.

As readable as a beach book, and as thoughtful as an essay

This heartwarming story is about Abby, who is asked to lead a bike packing trip through New York State, Mark (her boyfriend), Sebastian (the familiar stranger that ends up on the trip), and the cast of riders surrounding them. Throughout the two weeks, Abby and her crew learn that sometimes you just don’t know the full story of the ones you love, it takes guts to do the hard things, and it’s important to love yourself before loving someone else. Sweet story with some good lessons

The Breakaway by Jennifer Weiner was a book that I did not connect with. The characters were not as interesting as. I was hoping and it was difficult to make connections with them and the story. A little all over the place and hard to follow at time, but that could just be me because I had to reread pages again since I kept losing concentration. Not my favorite Jennifer Weiner book but thankful to NetGalley and Atria Books for the gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

I felt like this book was a little all over the place. It was trying to do so many things all at the same time that it didn't really settle squarely on one main idea for the plot. I love a compelling book with multiple characters as much as the next reader, but the book has to know for sure what it's point is going to be. I didn't know if this book was supposed to be about body issues, women's rights, men's rights, generational trauma, the effects of alcoholism, all of the above, only some of the above, some of the above dialed up and down at different points in the novel...? It was just confusing.

It also felt incredibly predictable. The rom-com portion felt predictable. The "mothers-hiding-secrets-that-they-share-with-their-daughters-and-forge-a-new-bond-with-them" felt predictable. Even the sections dealing with body issues felt predictable. I really only was surprised by one or two minor parts of the book, and they were tucked in kind of like an afterthought.

I also think that making Abby the POV character and then expecting readers to accept everything she said as the truth of her life -- when said truth was proven false later -- was a lot. Any book functions as a collection of layers. If we're given the layer that Eileen, Abby's mom, just wants her to get skinny and that layer is put down over and over without anything to refute it, it becomes really hard -- almost impossible, in fact -- to believe anything else.

That's why I really wasn't buying into Eileen's "transformation," and we're never really given a clear reason why she decided to do the biking trip in the first place. "I wanted to spend time with you" isn't a strong enough reason when the only information readers have gotten is that Eileen's sole purpose in every interaction with her daughter is to remind her she needs to lose weight. I kept waiting, all the way until the end, for her to say she was dying, even though she makes it clear in the opening pages she most certainly is not. So then why the sudden change of heart? Characters -- and people in real life -- don't flip like that without some concrete reason.

I also found the whole storyline with Morgan problematic only because the adults around her are encouraging her to lie and keep a secret from the parents responsible for her. It's true that young people need trusted adults around them who aren't their parents, but those trusted adults are typically people the teens have known for a while and not adults they just met for the first time. Morgan is a teenager going through something terrifying, and she manages to convince every adult around her that they need to go along with her plan instead of them sharing with her the long-term consequences of that plan and explaining that she really does need to take a minute to consider who she's lying to and what might happen to her health if something were to go wrong. I'm not talking about the choices she's making -- I'm looking at the larger ramifications of how the people around her are behaving and the fact that they let a 15-year-old talk them around so fast.

I also forgot about the majority of the bike riders on the trip and kept struggling to remember names and whether they were important and if I needed to spend so much energy on them. Why have characters there if they're not going to contribute anything whatsoever to the overall plot?

I'm sure a lot of people might have enjoyed this book, but it really wasn't for me.

While I haven't read a ton of Jennifer Weiner's books, the ones I've read have always felt light, and fun with elements of mystery and romance. The Breakway felt different than other books I've read by her. It dug into some tough issues including weight and body image, diet culture, abortion, religion, and so much more. I felt that this book was incredibly poignant, while still being easy to read and digest.

Per usual, Weiner's characters were fabulously developed and they completely came off the page. I loved Abby, and love that Weiner always has a plus-size character featured prominently in her books. It's so important to normalize that every body is beautiful no matter the size, and I love how she always does this. It means a lot to me, especially as a plus-size curvy woman.

This was dramatic, raw, and incredibly well-written, and I enjoyed every second of it.

Thank you Atria Books and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.
4.5/5 stars

Another gem by Weiner. I enjoyed The Breakaway and its modern take on living in a larger body in this society.

When Mark and Abby met, they were teens at a weight-loss camp. When they reconnected 15 years later, Mark was half the size he was when they met, and Abby is (mostly) at peace with her plus-size body. The two fall fast for each other again and are on the track to happily ever after.

Only, Abby can't quite put her finger on why this doesn't feel *quite* right. Or why she keeps thinking about a sexy one-night stand she had two years ago with a man named Sebastian.

When she's asked to fill in leading a cycling trip, she jumps at the chance for some time away to clear her mind and figure out what, or who, she really wants. Things get complicated when Sebastian shows up as one of her cyclists. And they get even more complicated when Abby's mother signs on as a last-minute participant.

The group will pedal 700 miles together, where more than one secret will come to light. At first glance, this may seem like "just another rom-com," but Jennifer Weiner does a fantastic job writing about the complicated nature of life, love, and mother-daughter relationships.

I’ve been reading Jen’s latest The Breakaway, and loving it as I have all her books! Her novels feature body positivity, believing in yourself, and finding those positive friendships and relationships. The Breakaway is a story of motherhood, raising daughters, women’s rights, and finding your own strength. A fantastic book for the time we are in now, with all the heartfelt issues of real life.