Title: Heartbeat
Author: Elizabeth Scott
Format: egalley
Pub. Date: January 28th 2014
Source: Netgalley & Harlequin Teen
★★★
Three stars.
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Emma and her stepfather are in a stage of everlasting grief. Emma's mother is artificially alive, kept on the support of machines in the hospital in order to continue growing the unborn baby inside her. She doesn't expect to find help in the car-stealing bad boy Caleb, but learns that maybe her grief isn't forever, and that he could be the one to shake her from it.
Once again, I seem to be in the minority for this book. I have not read an Elizabeth Scott book prior to this one, and I had seen so many fangirling reviews that I thought that I must give this a read. And in all honesty, I'm surprised this book wasn't for me. I LOVE tearjerker books. I love books filled with drama. I love bad boys. But somehow all the things I love about the premise of this story got lost in translation.
The biggest issue that I had stems from the main character, Emma. My regular readers know that my connection to characters is vital to my enjoyment of a novel. To be blunt and simple, I hated Emma. She was a bundle of disrespect and hatred, and it made me extremely disinterested in how the story played out. She came across as downright mean. I understand that she was grieving, and that we all handle loss in different ways, but for me it was just too much.
Despite that, I will say that Elizabeth Scott is very good at writing prose. The book successfully manages to maintain a dreary, grieving tone throughout the story with a lot of good quotes within it to match. I feel that despite my hate towards Emma, she did have a sense of raw sincerity to her, at least with regards to Caleb and her mother. And, though it's not really an item that should be looked at while picking a book, the cover is gorgeous.
I cannot stress enough how much I love the concept for this book. It's a tragic story, a captivating one. Could you imagine being in Emma's shoes? It's heartbreaking. I
I think I'd certainly give this book a try, the premise really sounds like something I'd enjoy reading. But perhaps I'd wait until my TBR list got a little shorter.
ReplyDeleteYou'd cry.
DeleteI did enjoy this one, and I also feel like I'd read more by this author in the future (this was her 1st that I'd read). I understand your feelings about Emma, but for me, I took her awful behavior as the only way she could manage her grief, and felt really sorry for her. It's such a tragic situation, and it's hard to imagine going through all that. Her behavior made me really angry, especially how terribly she treated her stepfather, but I ended up admiring how the author makes us care about the family. It's kind of brave to have a main character who acts out so badly!
ReplyDeleteLisa
I definitely agree with you there, it is DEFINITELY brave to write such a bad behaving character. I liked a lot of the aspects of the book, and it was definitely worth a read, but something about it just rubbed me a bit wrong.
DeleteIt does sound heartbreaking which scares me. But it does sound good too.
ReplyDeleteIt left me really torn, overall.
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