Thursday 18 July 2013

Review: Heart-shaped Bruise by Tanya Byrne

Heart-shaped Bruise by Tanya Byrne
Release date: September 2012 (paperback)
Publisher: Headline
Source: Purchased
Reason for reading: Love the premise, seen really good reviews

Goodreads description:

They say I'm evil. The police. The newspapers. The girls from school who shake their heads on the six o’clock news and say they always knew there was something not quite right about me. And everyone believes it. Including you. But you don't know. You don't know who I used to be. 

Who I could have been.


Awaiting trial at Archway Young Offenders Institution, Emily Koll is going to tell her side of the story for the first time. 


Heart-Shaped Bruise is a compulsive and moving novel about infamy, identity and how far a person might go to seek revenge.


My thoughts:


I really didn't know what to expect from this book when I started to read it. I'd seen the really good reviews and the award nominations but I wasn't sure how I would feel about it. I also felt kinda bad because I read Heart-shaped Bruise after reading Shadow and Bone which I LOVED and I felt like HSB wouldn't be able to match up.


But it did. It was so wonderful. You know when you start a book and you just know that you're going to love it? That is exactly how I felt reading Heart-shaped Bruise. Emily Koll was so captivating. Her voice just leapt out of the page. I loved how the fact she was writing in a notebook, never sure if someone would actually read it, made it feel so much more personal. Like you were the only person to read her story.  Emily was so full of life, of vitality, even though she judged herself so harshly. I felt like, because she was so hard on herself, I didn't have to be. I didn't have to hate her, or be shocked by her or resent her, because she did all that herself. It was so easy to empathise with her, to like her, which isn't really something I expected. I actually really liked Emily, loved her even, despite what she'd done. I totally got why she felt she had to ruin Juliet's life, like, she had to hate someone and she couldn't hate her dad because she loved him, so she hated Juliet. She needed someone else to experience that moment of  realisation that a person you trusted and loved wasn't who you thought they were. It was kinda tragic because all the way through her retelling of her story you can see how it COULD'VE gone; how her life could've been if she didn't have such a need for revenge.


I've read a couple of books where the main character has done something horrible and they skirt around it, hinting at it without actually telling you what happened, and I can find the whole thing quite frustrating and not particularly enjoyable. I find myself reading the book simply to find out what happened rather than because I actually want to. This didn't happen with Heart-shaped Bruise. I enjoyed every minute of reading it, every snippet of information Emily gave me, every snarky comment and beautifully-constructed sentence. I didn't feel like she was keeping secrets from me because she wanted me to read the whole of her story, but because she didn't want to think about them long enough to write them down until she really had to, but that the secrets were always there, at the back of her mind, permeating every thought. 

Heart-shaped Bruise is so fantastically written which is something I love in a book. The prose was beautiful and evocative and Emily felt so vibrant and real. There was a level of dark humour to the story that I didn't anticipate being there, but it really worked with and added to the story. I was initially disappointed by the ending, but once I thought about it I knew that ending it any other way would do the story, and Emily, and injustice. 

TL;DR: Heart-shaped Bruise is a darkly funny, intimate tale of a bit of an anti-hero dealing with the consequences of her actions.





8 comments:

  1. Great review! We should tell everyone we meet to read it, ha. (I did yesterday, actually).

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  2. I love your review! " I didn't have to hate her, or be shocked by her or resent her, because she did all that herself." You totally hit the nail on the head there and I think that's why so many people connected to Emily. Really glad you picked this brilliant book up and enjoyed it, Cait!

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  3. I read this last month and also enjoyed. I don't read a lot of crime novels so this was a nice book to ease in to the genre with. Glad you enjoyed it, Cait!

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  4. I've been so out of the reading scene lately that I hadn't heard of this one. It sounds so good. Thanks!

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  5. If there's any way to get me to read a book, that very last line definitely did it. Because by the time I got to disappointed by the ending I was ready to pull back.That's one of my biggest pet-peeves but I also love anti-heroes and not sugarcoating the horror they've committed. Then there's the fact that I'm completely curious about what it is she's done...

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  6. You read Shadow and Bone recently? YESSSSSS.

    "But it did. It was so wonderful. You know when you start a book and you just know that you're going to love it? That is exactly how I felt reading Heart-shaped Bruise." YES. And how awesome! Because that cover terrifies me!

    "I loved how the fact she was writing in a notebook, never sure if someone would actually read it, made it feel so much more personal." I think Code Name Verity also did something similar...

    "I find myself reading the book simply to find out what happened rather than because I actually want to. This didn't happen with Heart-shaped Bruise. ... she didn't want to think about them long enough to write them down until she really had to, but that the secrets were always there, at the back of her mind, permeating every thought."
    That's some fantastic writing then. I love me some good anti-heroes. I hadn't heard of this book before, but I think I'm now adding to the TBR.

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  7. I'm so glad you loved this - it was one of my favourite books last year.

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  8. This is one of the best reviews I have seen. It sounds like a great book, certainly something I will look out for. I'm a huge bookworm so will be adding it to my Amazon wishlist! :) http://storytellershannon.blogspot.co.uk/

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