Black Heart Blue . . . Book review

Spinebreakers crew member Emma kindly reviewed Louisa Reid's new book release for us, Black Heart Blue . . . enjoy!

Powerful and Harrowing

This was a book which really affected me emotionally, and one which was something very different: it was a story with a jumble of topics – it was about the love a girl felt for her boyfriend, about domestic abuse and also about what it is like to be truly different.

At first, I had really mixed feelings about this book. Rebecca was a narrator who you could in part identify with, despite her horrifying home life, however there were things which didn’t make sense until a long way into the story (for example the mentions of something being on/in the wall). This did take away from my enjoyment in the first couple of chapters, because I didn’t know what to think, or whether my initial thoughts were right. However, this did help to add an air of intrigue to the book, and this is something which I think paid off!

To begin with, I was only interested in Rebecca’s story, she was the character who really spoke to me, while I felt we knew so much less about Hephzi. A little way on in the book though, and I really wanted to find out more about her escapism from their horrific lives.

Despite the fact that it was a little confusing, this was one of the best books I have read this year and I read a lot. The use of the dual narrative helped me to understand both the effects of what happened on one twin, and how it all came to pass. I cried almost at the end, when I realised that what I had been waiting for from the beginning had finally happened: Hephzi had died, just as Rebecca recalled at the start.

I really don’t know how to describe this book to you, because it was a lot different from what I was expecting, and I hated the Mother and the Father far more than I expected to.

To begin with, I was expecting a ghost story, but it wasn’t. Instead, I found a unique book which I will definitely be reading again: as after reading to the end, the significance of some things at the start, is so much more than it seemed.

Overall rating 5/5