Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott [Review]

3.5 out of 5 Robots!

  

Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott
Genre: YA Contemporary
Release: January 28, 2014
Hardcover: 304 Pages
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
My Copy: Purchased
Reviewer: Shannon
Buy the Book: Amazon

Book Summary:

Life. Death. And...Love?

Emma would give anything to talk to her mother one last time. Tell her about her slipping grades, her anger with her stepfather, and the boy with the bad reputation who might be the only one Emma can be herself with.

But Emma can't tell her mother anything. Because her mother is brain-dead and being kept alive by machines for the baby growing inside her.

Meeting bad-boy Caleb Harrison wouldn't have interested Old Emma. But New Emma-the one who exists in a fog of grief, who no longer cares about school, whose only social outlet is her best friend Olivia-New Emma is startled by the connection she and Caleb forge.

Feeling her own heart beat again wakes Emma from the grief that has grayed her existence. Is there hope for life after death-and maybe, for love?(Courtesy of the Publisher)

Shannon's Thoughts:

Heartbeat is a hard book to read.  Or at least it was for me.  Emma is angry.  Very angry.  She blames her stepfather, Dan (who is the world's most patient man) for only caring about "his" baby and not letting her mother's body go.  She used to have a great relationship with him, but now she spews hate in his direction every chance she gets.   Emma comes across very selfish.  She refuses to care for her unborn brother and refuses to believe that her mother would want to be on life support to save him.  But grief does not make people think rationally and can blind them to a lot of things.  I was willing to give Emma some slack because her grief goes deeper than just being angry at Dan.  But that doesn't make it any easier to read, especially since I didn't understand Emma's point of view at all.

I did like the romance with Caleb.  I liked that she found someone who really understood her and was really on "her side" without judging.  Caleb has his own grief to deal with.  The situation with his family was also very hard to read.  My heart broke for him.

This book takes the worst of grief and shows it the reader.  Like, this is how awful a person can be when they are grieving, angry, and feeling guilty.  And while I ultimately liked the book, I'm not sure I would really want to read a book filled with those kinds of feelings again.