Review: Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott

I won this book through a contest at Teenreads.com, so a big thank you to everyone over there! I kind of totally forgot about entering the contest and was pleasantly surprised one night to come home and find this awesome book in my mailbox. Here’s my review of Elizabeth Scott’s novel Heartbeat: :)

Mourning and sadness take many forms, but author Elizabeth Scott’s stunningly honest and emotional portrayal of her narrator Emma’s grief over the death of her mother in her novel Heartbeat is a refreshing new voice in young adult fiction.

However, Emma isn’t only suffering the loss of her mother, she’s also suffering from what she perceives to be her step-dad selfishly keeping her mother alive to potentially save her unborn half-brother. This twist in the story turns Scott’s novel from an average story about loss into an innovative and heart-wrenching tale about a girl fighting to overcome her loss while also struggling to accept the new life that will soon enter her family. Having seen similar stories on the news in the past about women being kept on life support to deliver their children, it’s awesome to see YA authors finding the teen voices in these clips of coverage we see everyday.

Emma’s narration is direct and honest, although it can feel overly simple and redundant at times. She doesn’t waste time with metaphors or indirect ways of expressing how she feels, which amplifies the raw emotion of the story. Readers will be able to feel Emma’s anger, frustration, sadness and loneliness through the pages. They will also be able to see how she progresses through the process of mourning with the help of a complicated relationship with neighborhood bad boy Caleb and her best friend Olivia. By the end, readers will feel satisfied with the outcome of the journey they have seen Emma endure.

Scott creates a cast of characters that are simultaneously relatable and quirky in their own ways. Olivia, Emma’s devoted best friend, is repulsed by modern technology, opting to write school papers on a typewriter and use encyclopedias instead of Internet research. Caleb, haunted by the death of his sister, is driven to commit dangerous crimes. However, Emma sometimes falls into the background of her own story as her life is defined by the loss of her mother, her apathy about her schoolwork, her anger towards her step-dad and little else.

Dialogue, though, is the strength of this novel. The way the characters speak to each other in Heartbeat is remarkably accurate and natural. Through Emma’s conversations with Olivia, Caleb and Dan she changes and learns about herself, her mom, life and death.

Another strong element of Heartbeat was the romance between Caleb and Emma. Scott transforms the classic bad boy stereotype to have Caleb reflect the devastation Emma feels from losing her mother. The result is an endearing romance stemming from mutual loss that readers will root for.

Heartbeat is an emotional and endearing tale about a girl’s journey from grief to hope. It provides an honest portrayal of grief at a young age, of the search for why and how to move on. This beautiful and well-written story also exceptionally demonstrates the importance of friends and family in difficult times. It also shows that, while not everyone should drop concerns about school completely like Emma, in the long run those assignments and papers aren’t worth excessively stressing over. The memories we have with the people we love are far more important.

While Heartbeat is definitely geared towards teen girls, readers of any age and gender will be able to appreciate Emma’s story and will enjoy making the journey alongside her.

4/5

Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

I just want to say this is the best book I’ve read in a really long time. Usually I’m able to close one book and start another but I needed to wait a while after finishing We Were Liars. It was one of those stories that hits you so suddenly and all at once, and one that I’ll definitely be rereading again and again in the future. Before I fangirl more, here is my review:

Everyone tells lies. Some lies just happen to be more treacherous than others. People can lie to others, but they can also lie to themselves. Young adult author E. Lockhart’s tragically beautiful new novel We Were Liars explores such lies, and the quest for truth, as the narrator Cadence Sinclair Eastman struggles to remember the repressed memory of an accident that occurred the summer she was fifteen.

Cadence is part of the Liars along with Gat, Mirren and Johnny. The four are the grandchildren (or in Gat’s case, a close friend of the grandchildren) of the eerily perfect Sinclair family, which summers on their island near Martha’s Vineyard called Beechwood Island. The Sinclair patriarch has three daughters, of which Cadence, Mirren and Johnny are the eldest children.

Lockhart’s depiction of this wealthy, self-destructive New England family is at once horrific and dazzling. Readers will both love and hate the family, for the Sinclairs are simultaneously repulsive and endearing. The language used to describe the setting is overwhelmingly rich and intense. At times, Readers will feel as if they are actually on the island looking at the houses or just taking in the salty, sea air. Lockhart’s skillful description makes the setting and the characters of this novel come alive.

While Lockhart’s novel is stunningly original, readers familiar with Spring Awakening will find similarities in the dynamic between the young and the old: the adults’ ignorance ultimately causes fracture and havoc for their children.

Cadence’s narration of the story is immediate, raw and emotional.  Lockhart combines her narrator’s realistic and natural voice with a twist-filled plot to create a well-paced suspense novel that will demand the reader’s attention from start to finish. The use of first person in the present tense gives the reader the sense that they are unraveling the Sinclairs’ secrets alongside her. Her selective amnesia from the accident she can’t, or refuses, to remember is exceptionally exploited to create a breathless suspense tale. Lockhart pushes unreliable narration to its best, and readers will be shocked when the truth is finally revealed. The ending of this book will leave every reader sobbing. Kleenex are strongly recommended for the last thirty pages or so of this book.

While Cadence is such a strong and dynamic character in We Were Liars, all of the other characters in the novel are as richly developed. Cadence’s mother and aunts each have a distinct personality that affects the course of the novel. The other Liars also have richly developed personalities. Gat has a strong-willed resistance to the Sinclairs’ ideals as an outsider while Mirren and Johnny’s reluctant adherence and subtle rebellion to the expectations of their family, creating an intricate network of developed characters. Each character has an impact on the course of events the novel takes and no one falls into the background.

Lockhart’s use of fairy tales to help Cadence sort through her repressed memories gives the book a fantastic, cryptic quality. We Were Liars is a modern fairy tale of loss, rediscovery, regret and endurance. It’s a story for everyone, young or old, male or female.

It is a book that discusses the desperateness of young love through the complicated relationship between Cadence and Gat. It shows the tragic consequences of family feuding and politics. It shows the closeness of bonds between friends and family and how those bonds change and twist over time. It’s a story of grief and loss as well as the search for truth and knowledge. It’s a story about the narrow-sightedness of teenagers, and of people, and how we try to control what it ultimately becomes uncontrollable.

Overall, We Were Liars will leave each and every reader feeling that they have read something simultaneously nostalgic, immediate, profound and magical. There are simply not enough words to describe how good this book is, so you’ll have to read it and see for yourself.

This is a book that lives up to the hype. All of it.

5/5

I have really bad commitment issues...

Okay...I have neglected my blog so far. I've been caught up doing research of 19th and early 20th century farming techniques and colonies for an independent research thing I'm doing and riding my bike because I don't want to stay inside. Before I put up my first two reviews, which will hopefully get the ball rolling on this thing, here's my top 5 list of YA books. Just because. I used to have a top 3, but that didn't last long...I know some people don't have a top list for reading, but here are the books I've found the most relatable, the most read or just the most awesome (so far):

1. Looking for Alaska, by John Green
2. The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan
3. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
4. Let's Get Lost by Adi Alsaid
5. We Were Liars by E. Lockhart