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    Torn Away
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    Torn Away
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    Torn Away
    Audiobook7 hours

    Torn Away

    Written by Jennifer Brown

    Narrated by Lauren Fortgang

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Born and raised in the Midwest, Jersey Cameron knows all about tornadoes. Or so she thinks. When her town is devastated by a twister, Jersey survives – but loses her mother, her young sister, and her home. As she struggles to overcome her grief, she's sent to live with her only surviving relatives: first her biological father, then her estranged grandparents.

    In an unfamiliar place, Jersey faces a reality she's never considered before – one in which her mother wasn't perfect, and neither were her grandparents, but they all loved her just the same. Together, they create a new definition of family. And that's something no tornado can touch.

    A Hachette Audio production.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateMay 6, 2014
    ISBN9781478955252
    Unavailable
    Torn Away
    Author

    Jennifer Brown

    Jennifer Brown is the author of the young adult novels Shade Me, Bitter End, Perfect Escape, Thousand Words, and Torn Away. Her debut young adult novel, Hate List, was chosen as an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a VOYA Perfect Ten, and a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. She lives in the Kansas City, Missouri, area with her husband and children. You can visit Jennifer online at www.jenniferbrownya.com.

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    Reviews for Torn Away

    4/5

    66 ratings22 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Excellent YA first-person drama, almost but not quite a coming-of-age story. Superb characterization, nice tension, with a realistic and beautifully plotted story. The pace might be a little slow for some, but the story requires a measured delivery. I found it completely gripping, and only stopped reading when I was compelled to go to sleep, picking it up the next day to finish the story. Tissue box strongly recommended, maybe two for the ending. This was my first book by Jennifer Brown, but I will certainly read her again.
    • 3/5
      I received this book as part of the early reviewers. Living in tornado alley myself I can relate to the fact the weather can change in an instant. Teenager, Jersey Cameron, is used to hearing about severe weather. Her world is torn apart when she losses her family in a tornado. She goes to live with her father and grandparents. It takes her awhile to come to terms with her loss and be able to move forward with her life. Although I can have sympathy for Jersey for the loss of her mother and sister, I found it really hard to feel sorry for her. She comes across as bit of a drama diva. I actually felt more sorry for her grandparents than I did for her.
    • 5/5
      Jersey Cameron lives in a Missouri town with her mom, stepdad, & stepsister. She is finishing her junior year of high school. She is a normal teenager that hangs with friends, is trying to fit in, and gets slightly annoyed by her young stepsister. She is not willing to dance with her stepsister and shoos her away. When mom takes stepsis to dance class a tornado devastates the town. Jersey is home alone and survives under the pool table in the basement. After the storm passes she emerges to find her neighborhood destroyed. She wanders with her friend, a neighbor boy and waits for her mom & stepsister to come home. Her stepdad was at work, when will he be home? Time passes and she is forced to spend the night sleeping under the shelter of the pool table. When mom doesn't return, Jersey starts to make her way toward town with her neighbor. Eventually Jersey learns that her mom & stepsister were killed in the storm, her stepfather is ok but he doesn't want her. So she is shipped off to mom's ex (her biological father) that doesn't want her either. Jersey has to struggle to make sense of how her life can be ripped away in an instant and figure out how she's going to survive. Realistic and gripping story.
    • 5/5
      LOVED this book. I devoured it when it came, had to read ahead to see how it worked out. It really goes into the instant change your life goes through when a tornado or other devastating event occurs. Kleenex will be necessary.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this more than Brown's HATE LIST. This story was more compelling, easier to follow, and more accessible to its target audience, teens. However, TORN AWAY is very predictable, and by the end, I just wanted to finish it in order to reach its inevitable ending. Another issue I have with the book is Jersey's real father and his family: I found their behavior toward Jersey extremely unrealistic and the characterization flat, with the exception of Jersey's aunt.Overall, I think my teenage students will like this as an easy read, but it's certainly not a masterpiece by any means.
    • 5/5
      Thanks to Netgalley.com and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers for access to this title.

      Wow! I love Jennifer Brown, and she did not disappoint with this one. I went in looking for a story of trama and devastation and came out with so much more. That's only the beginning.

      This is such a heartbreaking story about our life perceptions, and how our relationships and how we view other people may never be how they really are. I loved the way JB shows how the MC feels without actually giving a lot of description of her feelings. You can feel her PTSD and all of her other struggles with abandonment without being explicitly told about it. I think I cried through the last 50 pages as she discovered new relationships and how to let people back into her heart.

      I can't recommend Jennifer Brown enough. I have loved everything of hers I have read and can't wait for more.
    • 5/5
      Torn Away accurately depicts a teenager going through loss and change. Jersey goes through so much inner turmoil, and it is so poignantly written that it is practically tangible. Teens can easily relate to the emotions and thoughts that run through Jersey, but the story also serves as a reminder that there is always a place one can call "home". Although there are many characters who are cruel to Jersey or abandon her, Brown gives insight into those characters' actions. Everything in the novel is written beautifully, and I really love how Jersey is very independent- she doesn't need a boyfriend to help her find a place where she belongs. The romance is extremely minimal, but very sweet. The main thing I enjoyed reading was Jersey's adjustment to her new "homes", and slowly beginning to trust people after experiencing so many betrayals. I absolutely adore this novel, and would recommend it for all teens. I received a copy of Torn Away through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program.
    • 4/5
      I won a copy of Torn Away by Jennifer Brown through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Jennifer Brown is one of my favorite authors because she has such an enjoyable and down to earth writing style. She presents characters that are in realistic situations and deal with them in ways that the reader can connect with and understand. I also like how she understands how teens think and behave and is able to convey that through her writing. This is the third book I've read by Brown and she has yet to disappoint me. Torn Away is a novel that deals with loss, grief and healing. Jersey's world is ripped about when her mother and sister are killed when a tornado rips through their mid-western home town. Already reeling with the loss of two of the people she loved most she is equally devastated when she is sent to visit a father she hasn't seen in years. The book details Jersey's struggle with her loss and sense of abandonment as well as her discovery that there are two sides to every story. This book was about loss and the strength that can be gained from having faced the worst that can happen and still managing to grow and move forward. Great book for teens but will definitely appeal to adults as well. 4 stars!
    • 4/5
      Jersey's world is torn apart when a tornado rips through her Missouri town, taking away the only family she has ever known. The fatality toll is high for such a small town, and school ends early because the school is also destroyed. Jersey and her friends survive the first couple of days until her stepfather finds her and takes her to a hotel, but he's devastated by the loss of his wife and daughter and can't cope with it all. I don't want to say too much about the rest of the plot for fear of revealing spoilers. The first part of the story is probably essential but it is slow and hard to get into. After Jersey's life begins to drastically change, this novel turns into a real tear-jerker. It leaves the reader wanting to know more about what happened to Jersey during her senior year. The ending certainly makes it possible for the author to create a sequel that can tie up some of the things that may not have been fully resolved while exploring a slightly different theme. It's a book that many teens will enjoy reading and can certainly be used to explore themes relating to grief and disaster. I received an Advance Reading Copy of this title through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program with the expectation that a review would be written.
    • 4/5
      The tale of a tornado and its aftermath felt amazingly real - Jersey's experiences during the storm and then afterwards gave me such a sense of the bleakness of her situation. After such a shocking beginning, the novel settles down into an exploration of family ties and the truths and lies that make up family histories. While there are no easy solutions to the losses Jersey experiences, the story does end on a note of hope and the emotions Jersey has feel very real.
    • 4/5
      I received TORN AWAY by Jennifer Brown through the Early Review program, the Hachette Bonus Batch.I'm not really into tragic teen stories. I like adventure and faerie tales, so this wasn't the perfect book for me at first blush. However, within a half an hour of picking it up, I was over 60 pages into the book. It's a very easy, well-paced read. The tragedy seems a bit lightly treated at times - the main character, Jersey, seems to make great leaps and strides in healing awfully quickly - however, I was delighted, by the end, to feel like the title had a new and deeper meaning. I don't think the title refers to her home or family being torn away, ultimately. I think the title refers to illusion and lies being torn away.The process of both her life as she knew it and the lies that created it being torn away is started by the tornado tearing away her mother and sister, yes, but Jersey continues to find bits and pieces of her life being slowly torn away and I was surprised to feel like that was a *good* thing. While I by no means think the tragic deaths of a mother and sister are good things, the aftermath was *incredibly good* for Jersey.I do wish there had been a little more resolution in the book. Jersey ends up in a lot of bad, difficult situations and they don't really resolve ... they just end. And then she picks up and moves on. I feel like we missed some *vital* moments of her making peace with those bad situations before we saw her happier and healthier when the book ended.But, as I said, I did enjoy feeling like the context of the book dramatically changed by the end and I would be interested to re-read the book with this new context. I will likely pick it up again!B+ (layered meanings, well-paced writing; light treatment of tragedy, lack of resolution)
    • 5/5
      I received this book as an ARC and immediately put it on top of my pile. I would categorize [Torn Away] by [Jennifer Brown] as a coming of age novel because the main character,Jersey, in the beginning is a typical teenager who does not realize what she has but not in a spoiled rotten way. When the tornado strikes her whole world changes and she will need to learn to live again. She finds more about her family than she ever knew, or wanted to know. I will recommend this book to everyone but especially my students. I did not want to put it down.
    • 4/5
      This story sucked me in quickly. The tornado hits the reader hard and holds on while all of the characters are dealing with the aftermath. It is true that we never find out what to do after a natural disaster and it is rare that we hear more than just a short sound bite about the affects on individuals, so I thought that aspect was really well done.The novel lost me a bit once Jersey leaves her home town. I have read a lot of young adult books and I teach high school in an underprivileged area, but it was still hard for me to believe people can be that horrible to one another. Yet, I did like that Jersey was finding out about her mother's true past. We never tell our children the whole truth and even if we think we do it is our memory of what happened...which is not always accurate.I would recommend this novel. I think it explores a tragedy on which we rarely focus.
    • 4/5
      I wanted to read Torn Away because the aftermath of a devastating tornado sounds like the perfect storm of emotions, powerful grief and sense of loneliness and desperation. I have also read other books by Jennifer Brown and enjoyed so this would appeal to me for that reason even if the synopsis didn't grab me, which it did. We get a little snapshot of Jersey's life before the tornado hit, but it was a powerful one. It is a memory of telling her little sister to go away, and those words as well as how often she ignored her requests to play would haunt her after the storm hit her house and she is afraid of the fate of her sister and that of her mom. We see some exasperation with Jersey and her mom requesting her to do chores, and Jersey's reminiscing how she would feel less burdened by helping when it was just her and her mom, but it is harder on her know that her mom is remarried and the number of people have doubled. We can see that her and her mom had a close relationship even with the current teenage entitlement and bucking against what asked to do. When the tornado hits, there is automatic fear and a great sense of loss. Not only was Jersey worried about her whole family who wasn't at home, but seeing the devastation of the storm on their house and belongings. When the storm passes and she makes her way outside she sees so much of her neighborhood and everything she can see is torn up. Even the roads, so they are cut off from emergency vehicles. The neighbors band together as much as possible at first, searching for survivors in the wreckage and figuring out shelter from the following rain and thunderstorms. That knitting together in tragedy when so much in uncertain kept some lightness even though it was such a harrowing situation to be in. Helping and giving what's left of your possessions when you are dealing with your own sense of loss shows to the goodness that is in so many people. Jersey was a mix of strong and vulnerable. Opening up to her friends and neighbor who helped her too right after the tornado hit was where we could see how much she was struggling. But she just keeps dealing with each challenge and figuring out some way to survive. She has this honesty in her voice, where we know that she is going through a lot, but she somehow manages to keep some optimism. It was a long road for Jersey to even get to a place where she felt wanted and loved, but I was pleased at how the story wrapped up. Maybe a bit more time with her final living arrangements but I did like that it wasn't perfect for her right away and that she learned more of the young side of her mom who made mistakes in her life as well as how she portrayed extended family. Bottom Line: Powerful and emotional story about a town and in particular one strong teen devastated by a tornado.
    • 5/5
      When was the last time you picked up a book and, upon reaching the end of it, were genuinely surprised that it was over already? Granted, this happens easier on e-reading devices (which was what I was reading TORN AWAY by Jennifer Brown on) but I've had it happen once or twice with a hard copy of a book as well. Chances are, if something like that happens to you, you may end up feeling like I did when I reached the end of TORN AWAY. I felt sad and a bit bereft. I wanted the story to keep going. To be honest, I've never, ever felt that way about a young adult contemporary novel. But TORN AWAY also had something I connected hard to.Read the rest of this review at The Lost Entwife on July 25, 2014.
    • 5/5
      Oh my! Wow! Wow! This may well be the best book I've read this year! Written unpretentiously with emotion and realism, this is a book that grabs you by the heart and doesn't let go until the final sigh. I love this book so much I don't have much to say that isn't just plain gushing. My most telling comment can be to explain that for several pages just past the middle of the book, I *actually* wept! This is not something I do. I don't cry at movies and certainly not over books. I'm autistic, Asperger's to be precise, a logical person who can talk and explain emotions without expressing any emotion and make-believe just *does not* bring me to tears. Yet there was a point in "Torn Away" when a lump formed in my throat and tears welled up in my eyes and for several pages they streamed down my face. My highest praise. Bravo, Jennifer Brown. I will most certainly be taking a look at her other books.
    • 4/5
      Many teens in the midwest will connect to this story. The thought of a tornado hitting your town is very real where I live. Jersey, the main character, loses all that is important to her and has to find her way ("be my own hero") to find a way to cope with her losses. A page-turner that readers will find hard to put down. It's especially good for reluctant readers due to the few characters and explosive scenes.
    • 5/5
      Well, I was not expecting this!! This was so good. This jumps right into the story, and you will immediately thrown into an emotional turmoil. This is exactly why I am so scared of storms and what they can lead too. It is so scary to know that everything that you know can be gone in a matter of minutes. Such a great read!
    • 3/5
      This was okay, but Jersey never really appealed to me. I felt sorry for all she went through, but at times her behaviour was totally inappropriate. I especially hated the way she lashed out to the grandparents who loved her. Also, after the tornado passed, very little happened except for Jersey and her moods.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this more than Brown's HATE LIST. This story was more compelling, easier to follow, and more accessible to its target audience, teens. However, TORN AWAY is very predictable, and by the end, I just wanted to finish it in order to reach its inevitable ending. Another issue I have with the book is Jersey's real father and his family: I found their behavior toward Jersey extremely unrealistic and the characterization flat, with the exception of Jersey's aunt.Overall, I think my teenage students will like this as an easy read, but it's certainly not a masterpiece by any means.
    • 3/5
      This very intense story tells what happens to a girl who loses her family when a strong tornado hits her city in Elizabeth, Missouri.Jersey Cameron, 16, lives with her mom, 5-year-old stepsister Marin, and stepdad Ronnie in a town where tornado warnings are fairly common. Residents often practiced for what to do when the sirens went off, but as Jersey says later, “. . . we’d never - not once - discussed what to do after.” For some people, the tornado is only the beginning of the pain and heartache.When the tornado hits, Jersey is home alone and goes to the basement. She later finds out her mom and Marin are among the 129 dead. Ronnie eventually comes back to the wreckage of the house and takes Jersey to stay at a motel, but he is emotionally devastated, and decides he cannot take care of Jersey. He drives her three hours away to the home of her father’s parents, people Jersey didn’t even know existed. She had not previously met her dad, Clay.Clay and his wife are mean drunks, and their two girls are even more vicious. Clay’s parents - ostensibly Jersey’s grandparents, aren’t much better. Clay’s sister is the only one who even shows a spark of humanity, but she has her own burdens, and not much time for Jersey. Jersey begs her BFF Dani back in Elizabeth to ask her mom to come get her, but Dani’s mom calls Ronnie instead.Ronnie comes to pick up Jersey, but won’t take her back himself. He delivers her to Jersey’s mom’s parents this time. Jersey had always been taught by her mom that they were “the enemy,” and Jersey had never met this set of grandparents either. Barry and Patty seem to be warm, loving people, but Jersey feels that even being nice to them would be a betrayal to her mom. In fact, loving anyone seems like something Jersey never wants to risk again. She is filled with confusion and guilt and rage, and she is scared and lonely and tired all the time. As time passes, however, Jersey starts to see that the truth isn’t always black and white, and what her mom told her was only one side of the story. And her grandparents have infinite patience, even when Jersey herself knows she is being “unfair, and selfish and ugly.” She is somewhat astonished to observe that her grandparents seemed to understand what she was going through, and “they’d acted like… family. Like they were offering a place to belong. I just had to take it.”By the end of the book, Jersey is starting to realize that “family” has to do with “what was in your heart.” Her grandparents’ hearts were open. If Jersey wanted family again, “all I needed to do was open up and let them in.” She is beginning to think that maybe she can.Discussion: This book will be very helpful to kids who feel betrayed by people they thought they could trust. When a child is abandoned or mistreated or shocked by finding out unpleasant truths, who can help the child cope if the very people who are supposed to be the caregivers aren’t available? How can the child overcome the anger and grief? For all those who have been victims of disasters, divorce, abuse, abandonment, or other situations causing profound emotional dislocation, this story will make them feel less alone.Evaluation: This is a sad but hard-hitting and very realistic seeming story that ends on a hopeful note.
    • 5/5
      Sixteen-year-old Jersey survived the tornado that hit Elizabeth, MO alone in her basement, under her stepfather Ronnie’s pool table. Her mother, Chrissy, and 5 year-old sister, Marin, were at dance class and were not as lucky. After several days Ronnie appears. Their house and belongings are destroyed. The only saved relics are Marin’s favorite purse and a ceramic cat with the number 6 on it, one of 16 anonymous birthday gifts Jersey assumes were from her father, Clay, who abandoned her at an early age. It is a complete shock when Ronnie says he is too emotional to care for her and she must move to another city to live with Clay’s extended family. They make it known that they do not want her but will take her as a family obligation. Jersey and her two teenage cousins clash immediately and Jersey is forced to leave. Instead of taking her back, Ronnie takes her to Chrissy’s parents, who Chrissy said disowned her when she married Clay.In Torn Away, Jennifer Brown, author of A Thousand Words (Little, Brown, 2013/VOYA June 2013), describes in realistic detail the physical and emotional wreckage of storm victims. Not only has Jersey lost her home, immediate family and friends, but she is forced to live with people who do not want her or people she believes have disowned her mother and never tried to maintain contact. Along with acclimating to new families, Jersey also learns that ‘truths’ her mother told her may not have been so. Torn Away is vivid and emotional as Jersey comes to terms with her grief, new life and new knowledge.