Heart Bones, by Colleen Hoover, is a romance novel and a stand-alone book.
Heart Bones follows 18-year-old, Beyah as she spends the summer with her estranged father
and his new family in Texas. After her mother’s death, she was forced to contact the man who
left her when she was just a baby. Planning on laying low until she went to college in the fall,
her plan was thrown off by Samson. She wanted to stay away from him, but he became more
unavoidable as time goes on. With more secrets than answers for her, the two spend a summer
with each other all while navigating broken promises and their increasing differences. While
trying to avoid that summer will eventually come to an end, Hoover takes you through a story
of heartbreak and romance and too many secrets to count.
Heart Bones is a fast-paced novel detailing the romance between Beyah and Samson. Though
fast-paced can sometimes be good, it was a bit too fast in this novel. The story glosses over
important details necessary to create their connection and explain it to the reader. The novel
moves from each moment to moment, oftentimes each happening within hours of each other.
With no pivotal points in the book, the way they get closer is unexplained and unaccounted for.
By the end of the book, they are intimately tied but we have a very shallow understanding how
they formed this connection. The novel’s one redeeming quality is the element of suspense and
surprise. The secretiveness of both main characters kept the audience on edge. Overall, the
novel was fast paced but also somewhat effective at conveying emotion and the connection of
Beyah and Samson.