Breakout

Wyman, Christina. Breakout
March 10, 2026 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Ellie Starr's parents are separated, and live across town from each other. Ellie spends most of her time with her mother, seeing her father only two weekends a month. Now that 8th grade has started, Ellie has to turn her attention to the capstone project that teachers have been alerting them to since 6th grade; Ellie isn't happy that her school has a "Stalk You Child" system so that her mother always knows her grades. Her best friend, Aggy, whose mother's family is from India and whose father's is from Germany, is being forced into a project that her mother finds interesting, and Ellie is ready to default to one about processed food and carbon footprints before she hangs out with her Aunt Lydia. Lydia is a dog trainer, so Lydia wants to use her aunt as her "expert" and research information about whether dogs make people happy. Ellie is struggling with severe acne, and will try anything, including putting toothpaste on her face. This doesn't end well. Her mother thinks that Ellie picks at her face, and eats the wrong foods, and that's why the blemishes persist. Money is tight in Ellie's family, and a source of argument between her parents, who say they can't afford to get divorced. To further complicate matters, Ellie's mother is dating a man named John, borrowing Ellie's fashionable jeans to wear, and putting on makeup. She wants Ellie to help out more around the house, doing her own laundry, helping with grocery shopping, and staying by herself when her mother goes out. Her mother doesn't talk to Ellie in a very productive way, and constantly uses hurtful language. Luckily, Aunt Lydia is more supportive. When the family car is damaged, money becomes even tighter. There's some friend drama with Aggy, who has been hanging out with another girl, Casey. Eventually, Ellie's mother takes her to a dermatologist, who says that while Ellie's acne is bad, there's not a lot to be done about it. 

Strengths: I love the family dynamics in all of Wyman's books, and seeing Ellie going between two living situations with different expectations will resonate with many readers. Being unable to afford things is something that many families experience, although I am one of those people who buy mulitple boxes of pasta when it is on sale! The capstone project was stressful just to read about, so that was a good thing to have hanging over Ellie's head on top of everything else. Wyman has a great foreword about including supportive adults in her characters' lives, even though kids in real life don't always have them. Including dogs and dog training is a nice touch. There's a good amount of information about treating acne, although there could also have been an end note with some resources. 
Weaknesses: Wyman's Slouch and Jawbreaker  both ended up being rather hefty books with small print, and haven't circulated as well as I had hoped. I would have liked this to have been better edited so that it was shorter; some of the situations could have been condensed or not mentioned as many times. I think that the contrast between the graphic novel looking cover and the length of the stories has caused some trouble. I wish it weren't the case, but it seems to be. 
What I really think: There are not a lot of books that address the common teen problem of acne, but  Howse's Zitface (2011), Greenwald's The Real Us (2017), Burns' YA Smooth, and  Ogle and Valeza's Pizza Face do. Readers who are interested in more complex characters with sometimes difficult lives will be interested in this title.