While I applaud the effort, I wish the finished product were more fulfilling an experience. The main emotion I felt reading this book was boredom.

None of it ever feels fully realized, though.

The characters have a lot of potential, and even realistic conflict. To Break a Covenant has a lot of great pieces. It feels more like a string of loosely connected events leading to a conclusion that doesn’t fully happen. But none of it seems to matter, nor to build. The girls go into the mine on multiple occasions, run away, find an oasis. The plot, too, suffers from its own absence. I don’t need an on-the-page romance to justify queerness, but like the kleptomania, it was so mild it felt like an informed trait. Clem’s kleptomania is relevant to minor scenes on two occasions. The problem is that this never seems to go anywhere. All the pieces are here–in many cases, pieces I love! Clem is not only queer but struggling with kleptomania.

Perhaps the book’s greatest flaw is that it never quite seems to happen. The story follows best friends Clem and Nina, two girls determined to leave Moon Basin, as well as their new friends Lisey and Piper. The people of Moon Basin simply moved outside the range of the ash and formed New Basin, but they couldn’t escape the reputation, nor the supernatural evil of the mine. The town was formed after a disaster in a nearby mine, where fires still burn and rain ash over the abandoned Moon Basin. To Break a Covenant is set in perpetual aftermath.

To break a covenant by alison ames