An Unexpected Book: Our Chemical Hearts

Hi,

So I know that I’ve already done my wrap-up, and I’ve listed all the books that I’ve read this month, but then I went ahead and read another. I couldn’t resist. I started it last night, after finishing Crooked Kingdom, and finished it this afternoon.

Henry Page has never been in love. He fancies himself a hopeless romantic, but the slo-mo, heart palpitating, can’t-eat-can’t-sleep kind of love that he’s been hoping for just hasn’t been in the cards for him—at least not yet. Instead, he’s been happy to focus on his grades, on getting into a semi-decent college and finally becoming editor of his school newspaper. Then Grace Town walks into his first period class on the third Tuesday of senior year and he knows everything’s about to change.

Grace isn’t who Henry pictured as his dream girl—she walks with a cane, wears oversized boys’ clothes, and rarely seems to shower. But when Grace and Henry are both chosen to edit the school paper, he quickly finds himself falling for her. It’s obvious there’s something broken about Grace, but it seems to make her even more beautiful to Henry, and he wants nothing more than to help her put the pieces back together again.

And yet, this isn’t your average story of boy meets girl. Krystal Sutherland’s brilliant debut is equal parts wit and heartbreak, a potent reminder of the bittersweet bliss that is first love.

(GOODREADS)

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This book was not what I was expecting at all. I thought that it would be a fluffy read, and boy, could I have been more wrong? I wept and wept at etc end of this book it was so beautifully tragic and meaningful.

Henry Page was witty and made me laugh aloud so often and I thought that his thought process and mine related an uncanny percentage of the time. He was hilarious but then took things serious as he was such a respectful teenager, always behaving and them he met Grace.

Grace Town is a beautiful broken girl. Strangled in her grief, and seemingly weird. I didn’t expect er character to be how it was, not at all. From the description we don’t even meet the surface of Grace Town. She’s a mystery, and doesn’t let people in and I loved how this wasn’t a tale where all their problems get solved when they meet each other.

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The book really challenges teen life in this book, and what teens should and shouldn’t be doing at what age. It’s a coming of age story as well as a bitter-sweet romance and is this little capsule of perfection. It makes you laugh, cry, happy, sad, it’s mysterious, and cute all at the same time.

The book didn’t hang about. There weren’t 10000 pages introducing us into the characters and I think that’s why I was able to read it so quickly and become hooked from the first page. The book was consistent throughout, never with a dull moment and we learnt things about the characters as we went along, rather than information dumping in large quantities staggered throughout the book.

The second half of the book was brilliant. It was so mysterious and you had no idea what was about to happen, or what would go wrong next. The book took so many twists and turns that really kept me engaged as a reader.

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The character development was fantastic, and I had a very clear picture of Henry and Grace’s personalities and who they were deep down. I found that even the other characters such as Ma and Maz were brilliantly developed, as well as Henry’s parents and sister. We didn’t meet his family a lot through the book, but in places where they were present, you could really imagine them.

I loved hearing the story unfold from Henry’s perspective. It made the whole book more mysterious than if it had been in the third person. And Krystal really did a fantastic job of conveying his emotions as when he felt crushed, I was crushed and the voice that she gave him was just amazing.

Gosh I’m running out of words for “brilliant”. . .

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Overall, this book was a fantastic read and I totally recommend it! Have to read this book? Let me know!!

Thank you for reading,

Lu x