Heart Bones: Colleen Hoover

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A thoughtful exploration of how poverty impacts people's choices and blurs the lines between good and bad behavior. Beyah grew up in poverty with her single, drug-addicted mother. Food was never a guarantee for her and she was left to fend for herself way too young. Now, at 19, she has a volleyball scholarship waiting for her in Pennsylvania, but with her mother dying of an overdose and nowhere to go, she’s forced to live with her estranged father. So she joins her father and her new stepmother and stepsister to a beach house on a Texas peninsula. Her next door neighbor is rich boy Samson, who hides behind his camera with his secrets and mysteries. And it’s on the beach that Beyah learns what it’s like to trust, to love, and be loved, not just with Samson, but with a family she never expected. Her mouth is hanging slightly open, revealing yellow slivers of chipped and rotted teeth. It’s like she was in the middle of a sentence when the life slipped out of her. Maybe I'm finally outgrowing the new adult genre. (Say it ain't so!) At the risk of dating myself, it's been almost two decades since I was the age of the characters in this book. And even though I'd like to think I remain young at heart, I suppose there is a limit. My reading preferences can only remain that young for so long, especially when it comes to angsty romances. I close my eyes and press my face into my hands, trying to decide if my detachment is because of my upbringing or if I was born broken.

HEART BONES | Kirkus Reviews HEART BONES | Kirkus Reviews

Beyah on the ferry on the way to the beach house meets Samson, young, beautiful, womanizing and rich, but she can tell that he is just as broken as she is. They have a very bad first encounter which makes the following encounters just as bad. She wants to resist being one more of Samson's summer flings, but the attraction they feel is indisputable and they realize that they have a lot in common, but their destinies are too far apart. My only true issue with this novel is that Beyah’s relationship with her dad felt somewhat rushed. While there are clear strides toward the betterment of their relationship throughout the novel, it feels as if, in some ways, their relationship improved overnight. After Beyah’s declaration about her past, the pair revert to a “normal” father-daughter relationship with very little awkwardness—despite not having a relationship for the majority of her life. This feeling is especially strong when paired with the time jump when we can only assume that they’ve had all the hard conversations they would need to about her childhood, his absence, and whatnot.There’s a picture of Mother Teresa that hangs on our living room wall where a television would go if we could afford the kind of television that hangs on the wall, or even a home with the kind of walls that could hold a television. Later, Samson begins to open up and speak about an old man who used to visit their beach. The old man lived on a sailboat and was always kind to everyone before he went missing following a hurricane. Following his admission, Beyah and Samson find the man’s corpse down the beach by chance, buried beneath some sand. Samson is distraught and Beyah leaves him to his obvious grief. Overall, Heart Bones is a descriptive and engaging novel that delves into the healing of two traumatized teenagers. Both of these characters have gone through more than most people can imagine and that’s reflected in their attitude. Beyah and Samson both start as closed-off, cynical, and (Beyah especially) bitter individuals but they gradually begin to open up to become kinder and more trusting of the people around them. Together they’re able to branch into the world with a better world view and Samson is able to support Beyah in a way that no one has before. Don’t worry. Hearts don’t have bones. They can’t actually break.’ But what if the only way of knowing you grew a heart bone is by feeling the agony of the break?”

Heart Bones by Colleen Hoover | Goodreads

In August, I’ll be out of this life, and it won’t be because of anything my mother did for me, or because my father bailed me out of here. It’ll be because of me. Is it just me, or is Heart Bones a really gross title? Makes me think of something you dread finding in your take-out meal. As an independent American author from Texas, Colleen Hoover came to writing as a hobby, but still something she felt compelled to do. Like most modern working women, she balances her work, her marriage, her two young sons and still finds joy in writing and promoting her own creations. Janean is lying on the couch in the same position she was in when I left for my shift at McDonald’s eight hours ago. She’s staring at the picture of Mother Teresa, but she’s not actually looking at it. It’s as if her eyeballs have stopped working. Maybe we did grow heart bones. But what if the only way of knowing you grew a heart bone is by feeling the agony caused by the break?”

Colleen Hoover stand-alone books, ranked

I know the characters aren't our typical romcom fluffy romantic characters as it always have been with CoHo's books. I can’t remember the last time I’ve read a Colleen Hoover book. There was a time in my life where I would devour each and every book of hers. But I suddenly stopped. Her books started to feel like they were following the same formula. I’ve spent a lot of years becoming the person I am. It’s hard to change who you are in a span of a few days. My hair and my clothes are soaking wet. So is my face, but none of the liquid streaming down my cheeks is tears.

Colleen Hoover’s Books, Ranked - Glamour All of Colleen Hoover’s Books, Ranked - Glamour

For her sake, that’s the version of her I’m going to choose to miss. The person she never had the chance to be. On the surface, they have nothing in common. Drawn to each other by the secrets and troubled pasts they see hiding behind their eyes, they start to develop a relationship. One that will end in ruins if they’re not careful. What mystery are they afraid to reveal? Who do you think is going to break first?I didn’t realize what seeing the ocean would mean to me, but now that I’ve seen it, I want every human on earth to experience it. I may not be ending the summer with Samson by my side, but I’m ending it with something I didn’t have when I showed up here. I would certainly have an interest in dark shady (yes, shady 😑) characters like Samson but he's the cutest sht ever when he makes up his mind to do his best for the one he cares about. The two are drawn to each other, even when they try to resist, and as secrets are revealed, their bond is intensified. Change in both of them is paramount and both characters hope to heal their emotional scars and live with less boundaries in their young lives. In the companion book Losing Hope, Colleen take the story further, but this time from the perspective of Dean, the troubled youth with secrets to reveal.