Heart Bones by Colleen Hoover
Genre: NA Realistic Fiction
Blurb (on back of book):
Life and a dismal last name are the only two things Beyah Grim's parents ever gave her. After carving her path all on her own, Beyah is well on her way to bigger and better things, thanks to no one but herself. With only two short months separating her from the future she's built and the past she desperately wants to leave behind, an unexpected death leaves Beyah with no place to go during the interim. Forced to reach out to her last resort, Beyah has to spend the remainder of her summer on a peninsula in Texas with a father she barely knows. Beyah's plan is to keep her head down and let the summer slip by seamlessly, but her new neighbor Samson throws a wrench in that plan.
Samson and Beyah have nothing in common on the surface.
She comes from a life of poverty and neglect; he comes from a family of wealth and privilege. But one thing they do have in common is that they're both drawn to sad things. Which means they're drawn to each other. With an almost immediate connection too intense for them to continue denying, Beyah and Samson agree to stay in the shallow end of a summer fling. What Beyah doesn't realize is that a rip current is coming, and it's about to drag her heart out to sea.
MY OPINION: ****
Although this one took me the longest to finish so far on my Colleen Hoover binge, I ended up really enjoying it overall. There were times when it did get a little boring and I found it hard to keep going but I'm glad that I pushed through. While it wasn't my favorite (nothing beats It Ends With Us!), I really liked the characters and plot and found it very unique and heartbreaking, if a tad unrealistic.
The book opens with the passing of Beyah's drug-obsessed mother. Beyah is a nineteen-year-old girl who has learned how to be self-sufficient due to her lack of parenting. She has faced a myriad of awful things that no teenage girl should ever be exposed to, especially without any real family or friends by her side. After her mother's death, she realizes that she doesn't have anywhere to go before her upcoming term at Penn State, and ends up turning to her absentee father who she has barely spoken to for years.
She is transported from a trailer-house in Kentucky to a beautiful "rich-people" beach house in Texas. On the ferry ride to her new home, she encounters a boy named Samson. They don't hit it off, due to a variety of different reasons, but she soon learns that he is her next door neighbor for the summer. Her stepsister, Sarah, despite Beyah's initial misgivings, turns out to be the sweetest little angel and introduces Beyah to her boyfriend and friends, which just so happens to include Samson.
Samson and Beyah seem to come from completely different worlds. He is rich and owns multiple homes and seems to never have experienced real hardships in his life. However, as they begin to move from "enemies" to friends to a little more than friends, they soon realize they have much more in common than they initially thought. They carry around a lot of heavy secrets, though we don't learn about most of Samson's life until the very end in the iconic Colleen Hoover plot twist.
Beyah's father annoyed me throughout the entire book. All of Beyah's angry feelings towards him were completely justified. He did love his daughter but I think the way that he tried to force his way into her life after being gone for so long was awful. I appreciated his efforts but at the same time, he was a little much at times (i.e. his thoughts and actions towards Samson).
My only "criticism" of this book was the insta-love trope yet again. While it's not as immediate this time, Beyah and Samson seem to fall in love incredibly quickly. I thought it was unrealistic, especially given their initial meeting and Beyah's instant dislike of him. As I said in my review of November 9, I'm also just not the biggest fan of the trope and while it wasn't as extreme as that of Fallon and Ben, it was less enjoyable without the slow burn.
The book is incredibly heartbreaking. Both Beyah and Samson have a lot of problems that they are facing and I loved how they learned to navigate them together. I wish we had gotten to see more of Samson's perspective because I think it would have been quite interesting to understand his character and his truths. However, I absolutely love the way that Hoover created such complex characters and tragic storylines. While it became less and less believable as we neared the end, I overlooked the wow factor in favor of the stellar prose and writing style.
I would recommend this book to readers looking for a heartbreaking, beautifully-written romance novel. I would check trigger warnings, just in case, as the book deals with a lot of heavy topics!
Main Character: Beyah
Sidekick(s): Samson, Sarah, Sarah's boyfriend (I cannot remember his name!), family, friends, etc
Villain(s): Misunderstandings, mistakes, etc
Realistic Fiction Elements: This book was all very real to life.
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