A Thousand Broken Pieces by Tillie Cole is the sequel to her first book titled A Thousand Boy Kisses. In the first book, Poppy is diagnosed with cancer, and it shows how her final few months were spent with her sisters, her parents, and her soulmate Rune.

A Thousand Broken Pieces shows one of Poppy’s sisters, Savannah, who is now 17 years old, working through her grief journey four years after Poppy’s death. Along with Savannah there are five other teenagers who are dealing with grief. They are all sent on a trip abroad to help them cope with their grief by experiencing different cultures and religions as a therapy group.

One of the members of this trip, Cael, is a 19-year-old struggling with his brother’s death. He is sent on the trip by his parents because after his brother died, he quit doing everything he loved and didn’t even start his freshman year of college at Harvard as planned. Cael refused to talk about his brother until a certain girl from Georgia came along. When he found her one day at the lake outside their hotel struggling with her grief, he offered his support and even talked about his own journey.

All through the trip, Savannah and Cael came up with signals to pull themselves out of their nightmares and as they helped each other with their grief journeys, they grew to have feelings for one another. They started their relationship during the trip, and they knew they were the ones for each other. Although they were together, they still had to cope separately, and Cael found it much harder to cope and accept his brother’s death because of how he died. When Cael gets to a place that is dangerous for him, he is encouraged to leave with one of the group leaders early and get the extra help he desperately needed. By leaving early, he broke his promise to Savannah to stay together. He promised her they would meet again at Harvard in the fall and that he’ll be waiting there for her as a better person after getting extra help. She agreed and promised to wait for him no matter what.

The real question is: is their relationship strong enough to handle everything that their grief throws at them, or will it destroy them both?

This book is an emotional book that talks about sensitive topics, but it gives a realistic view on how people can handle grief in different ways. In this book you watch people grow beyond their grief and how not to live in it for eternity. It gives a strong message and people are able to relate to the multiple stories that are being told in the book.