Heart-Shaped Bruise by Tanya Byrne
Jun. 13th, 2012 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Yes. I’m Emily Koll. Daughter of the infamous Harry Koll.
You got it in one.
You all think you know who I am. But the one thing Google will never tell you is who I used to be … who I might have become if she hadn’t stabbed my father.
But I can tell you. So here we go – I’ll be me and you be the stranger on the bus.
18-year-old Emily Koll’s life was turned upside down the day Juliet Shaw stabbed her father. While an inmate of Archway Young Offender’s Institution, she wrote down in her notebook the events that led to her life changing for a second, terrible time and now that notebook has been found …
Tanya Byrne’s debut novel (a YA/adult crossover thriller) is an interesting psychological character study told in an assured, distinctive voice, but for me it was too melodramatic to work.
Emily’s first person voice is great - cynical, dry-witted and damaged by the shattering of family illusions. The best scenes are those describing life in the psychological unit and particularly her relationships with the other inmates. Her scenes with Doctor Gilyard are a psychological battle of wills with Emily trying to stop the older woman from working out why she did what she did. The way in which Emily calculates, bargains and weakens is written convincingly and at times is heart breaking. I also liked the way she describes her transformation into Rose so that she can get closer to Juliet in order to get her revenge and her obsessive behaviour is mostly believable.
The main problem is that the side characters are portrayed in broad strokes and consequently feel very flat on the page. The characters of Juliet and Sid should be interesting because they are the ones Emily spends most time with, but they aren’t. Juliet is never allowed to grow outside Emily’s obsessive vision of her and Sid’s a love interest who’s mainly there as a plot point. This is a shame because there’s scope for more character development with Emily seeing herself through the eyes of others and growing accordingly, but Byrne is uninterested in pursuing it beyond acknowledging the media portrayal of her as a monster.
The revelation of what Emily did and why she did it smacks of melodrama. Once revealed, I stopped believing that what Juliet did was big or bad enough to drive Emily to do it, which undermined a lot of the psychological build up. Adult readers may find Emily very juvenile while teens may think she should just get over it.
Ultimately, there were things here I liked and from a character point of view it’s worth a look even if the overall book didn’t work for me. I will definitely check out Byrne’s next book.
The Verdict:
Tanya Byrne’s debut novel (a YA/adult crossover thriller) is an interesting psychological character study told in an assured, distinctive voice, but for me it was too melodramatic to work. This is because when it’s finally revealed what Emily did and what drove her to do it, it doesn’t do justice to the raised expectations and I was left with a feeling that she’d massively over-reacted rather than been emotionally broken enough to reach that point. Although billed as a YA/adult cross-over market, I’m not sure it works for adult readers given that lack of pay-off. That said, the character work is otherwise well done and I would definitely check out Byrne’s next book.
HEART-SHAPED BRUISE was released in the UK on 10th May 2012. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the ARC of this book.
You got it in one.
You all think you know who I am. But the one thing Google will never tell you is who I used to be … who I might have become if she hadn’t stabbed my father.
But I can tell you. So here we go – I’ll be me and you be the stranger on the bus.
18-year-old Emily Koll’s life was turned upside down the day Juliet Shaw stabbed her father. While an inmate of Archway Young Offender’s Institution, she wrote down in her notebook the events that led to her life changing for a second, terrible time and now that notebook has been found …
Tanya Byrne’s debut novel (a YA/adult crossover thriller) is an interesting psychological character study told in an assured, distinctive voice, but for me it was too melodramatic to work.
Emily’s first person voice is great - cynical, dry-witted and damaged by the shattering of family illusions. The best scenes are those describing life in the psychological unit and particularly her relationships with the other inmates. Her scenes with Doctor Gilyard are a psychological battle of wills with Emily trying to stop the older woman from working out why she did what she did. The way in which Emily calculates, bargains and weakens is written convincingly and at times is heart breaking. I also liked the way she describes her transformation into Rose so that she can get closer to Juliet in order to get her revenge and her obsessive behaviour is mostly believable.
The main problem is that the side characters are portrayed in broad strokes and consequently feel very flat on the page. The characters of Juliet and Sid should be interesting because they are the ones Emily spends most time with, but they aren’t. Juliet is never allowed to grow outside Emily’s obsessive vision of her and Sid’s a love interest who’s mainly there as a plot point. This is a shame because there’s scope for more character development with Emily seeing herself through the eyes of others and growing accordingly, but Byrne is uninterested in pursuing it beyond acknowledging the media portrayal of her as a monster.
The revelation of what Emily did and why she did it smacks of melodrama. Once revealed, I stopped believing that what Juliet did was big or bad enough to drive Emily to do it, which undermined a lot of the psychological build up. Adult readers may find Emily very juvenile while teens may think she should just get over it.
Ultimately, there were things here I liked and from a character point of view it’s worth a look even if the overall book didn’t work for me. I will definitely check out Byrne’s next book.
The Verdict:
Tanya Byrne’s debut novel (a YA/adult crossover thriller) is an interesting psychological character study told in an assured, distinctive voice, but for me it was too melodramatic to work. This is because when it’s finally revealed what Emily did and what drove her to do it, it doesn’t do justice to the raised expectations and I was left with a feeling that she’d massively over-reacted rather than been emotionally broken enough to reach that point. Although billed as a YA/adult cross-over market, I’m not sure it works for adult readers given that lack of pay-off. That said, the character work is otherwise well done and I would definitely check out Byrne’s next book.
HEART-SHAPED BRUISE was released in the UK on 10th May 2012. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the ARC of this book.
