Author: Tanya Byrne
ISBN: 978-0-7553-9304-6
RRP: $22.99
This is the debut novel for English author Tanya Byrne and it is an extremely well written story that will captivate you start to finish.
At times Heart-Shaped Bruise was almost difficult to follow but it never quite allowed you to get lost, and you were warned right from the beginning that it was a possibility. This book isn’t written start to finish on a neat little timeline, it is written through a notebook left behind in a young offenders institution.
Emily Koll has done something terrible and she is in the Psych Unit of the Archway Young Offenders Institution awaiting trial. We don’t know what Emily’s done, it’s not something that she talks about. She talks about what the papers say and what other people say about her but you don’t hear much about what she thinks.
I am still thinking through this brilliant book so I’m at a loss for words, which is why I will first focus on the fact that at the end of the book there are two interesting sections which are becoming much more common in books these days. A Q&A with author Tanya Byrne that helps you get into her head and understand the motivations and inspirations behind the book, always an interesting read and great to do directly after reading the book while it is all still fresh. And a list of questions for reading groups, a great starting point for discussions and prompts for different ways to look at the book too.
Emily is shattered, she has survived the demolition of life as she knows it but she’s not the same. She’s broken and it seems that she doesn’t think there is a way back.
The notebook opens with a letter to Juliet that she was instructed to write by Dr Gilyard. It serves as a great opener, and a taste of the intrigue to come – actually it’s the basis of a lot of the intrigue to come.
All of the talk of Emily being evil leads you to expect a very different Emily than the one we meet. I don’t see evil in the broken young girl that we meet and spend the book getting to know. Through everything that is said there is also a lot left unsaid and it is what is left unsaid that compels you to turn pages one after the other long after you should be doing something else.
A lot of my need to keep reading was born of the desire to get to the bit where we find out what it is that she does to land her in this institution.
Heart-Shaped Bruise is a tale of revenge, betrayal, deception, identity, public persona and how it all combines to make us who we are – or does it?
If the whole world hears the story and makes conclusions about who you are does that make it true? Does all of that belief make it correct?
One small piece at a time we are allowed deeper into Emily’s head. She lets us in, I was going to say as she lets Dr Gilyard in but that isn’t really the case. We hear the things that are going through her head as she sits silently through her sessions with the Dr, or as she thinks through how much to say.
Emily is scared to hope and she’s scared to let anyone in because that’s never really gone well for her in the past. If she unlocks the padlocks protecting the most important parts of her story then maybe they will lose their potency, maybe she will discover that she doesn’t deserve them.
This 17 yr old girl is fundamentally scarred because of one single incident that not only changed the course of her future but totally destroyed her past as well. If nothing in her life is what it seemed does that also mean she isn’t who she thought she was? It certainly means she changed into someone she probably never would have been under different circumstances.
Emily’s writing is kind of disjointed but still flows in a way that makes perfect sense. We watch as she begins to look deeper into herself and examine how she ended up where she is. The story is much more involved than what you read in the papers. There are lots of references to ‘everything that I did’ and Emily projects herself as tough and uncaring but as the story unravels the mystery deepens and the picture of Emily changes quite dramatically.
Heart-Shaped Bruise is haunting and emotional but it is also nothing like what I expected. I love the way it was written, I love Emily’s voice and I love the way Tanya Byrne laid it all out on the page. It’s a book that has left quite an impression and I will be thinking about for quite some time.
50 of our members (sign up here) have been reading Heart Shaped Bruise, find out what they thought below…
I devour books, vampires and supernatural creatures are my genre of choice but over the past couple of years, I have broadened my horizons considerably. In a nutshell – I love to write! I love interacting with a diverse range of artists to bring you interviews. Perhaps we were perfect before – I LOVE WORDS!
Received my copy of Heart Shaped Bruise today and have just finished reading – it was superb! I am very impressed. Fast paced, action packed, emotive…..suspenseful and written with a sincere voice that speaks of the agony of revenge exacted, and most courageously debates our definition/understanding of identity “sometimes we do things that are so big – so awful- that they just become who we are….”
Received Heart shaped bruise on friday and enjoyed reading it over the weekend. I found it a fascinating read and it makes you think over the choices that Emily made. I was a little disappointed with the ending as I thought more questions that arose thought out the plot could of been answered. However, even though the book left me wanting more, it was very well written and had an intersting writing style.
Love love loved my book – thanks Beauty & Lace.
Not my usual chik-lit that I devour. Something so very different and it was very enjoyable.
I enjoyed getting to knw the main character and the style of writing was fantastic.
4/5 🙂
I read this book in a morning, and still don’t quite know if i loved it or hated it. It was very reminscent of John Marsden’s ‘letters from the inside’ , and also reminded me of the writing style of Sonya Hartnett. As an older YA novel, it would be perfect, I enjoyed reading the book, but i don’t think i would re-read it in a great hurry, it was predictable (to a point, although that may just be that i’ve read a few books along the same vein in the past), though i will disagree with the main review in saying i found it very easy to follow. The interview with the author in the back made me instantly think that this book could become a classroom text (actually, this book would be perfect for some of the topics discussed, and would make a brilliant, modern text).
This book was amazing from start to finish. I felt like I was in her head and knew exactly what was going on. There were a few good twists which made me want to keep reading (not that I didn’t want to anyway). I love a lot of different styles of books and this was perfect too. Thanks so much Beauty and Lace!
**Sorry the previous entry/comment was the wrong email address.
Thank you for The Heart Shaped Bruise – it was not a book I would normally read, but it had me intrigued. For me, the start was a little slow, but I loved the different story, and trying to get into the head of someone who had done something awful, even though we didn’t know all the details. I enjoyed the pace of the book, but did feel the end was a little rushed considering the pace throughout. Having said that I did enjoy the book, loved the way it made me think about my younger days and how things can go so differently, and have passed it on for another read already.
The value of this book, for me, lies not so much in the actual story line, but with the passion of the author and the qualities of honesty, being true to oneself and compassion which penetrate the writing. I was particularly inspired by Tanya Byrne’s Q and A section of the book with advice to writers in which she suggests writing, not to sell books, not to give readers what they might like but to be “honest”. I hope I have her blessing to keep the words “Write until your hands shake, until the words begin to weigh on those bruised parts of you that no one else knows about and when they do, keep writing” on my fridge for daily affirmation. It seems to me that this is exactly the passion with which Tanya Byrne has approached this novel.
I found the writing style unusual but interesting and I love the cover and title.
We are not given a definite answer to Emily,s story, but this seems to add to her being a believable and “living” character. I find myself having hopes for her future so, in a strange way, she still “lives on”.
Overall I have been inspired by and feel admiration for the author and will look forward to further writings.
Thank you Beauty and Lace for another book club opportunity.
I found Heart Shaped Bruise to be a compelling book . It was a shorter novel than I would usually read but when I picked it up and started reading I thought to myself that I couldnt really get into this story at the moment but as soon as I put it down I found myself picking it up again as I was thinking about the character the story is based around, Emily, and the choices she has made in her life .
Author Sophie Hannah has an intriguing writing style which may be to some peoples liking and not to others . It certainly isnt an “easy ” read but still a very likeable book well written and will appeal too many iIf you love a challenging read which I do then you will love Heart Shaped Bruise .Thank you Beauty and Lace for the opportunity to discover this Author
I read “Heart-Shaped Bruise” in a sitting, which is quite a recommendation from an pregnant exhausted mum with two kids!
Emily Koll is 17, incarcerated in the Archway Young Offenders Institution for a crime which is not immediately specified. We know that it is a crime of revenge. One night Emily’s father stabs and murders the police detective leading an investigation into him. The detective’s teenage daughter, Juliet, surprises him in the act, and stabs him with a bread knife to try to save her father.
Emily’s life falls apart as a result of that night. Her father survives, but is jailed. She becomes aware for the first time that he’s a notorious criminal. She’s pulled out of school by her uncle, and dragged off to live overseas away from the fuss (and the police). And she blames Juliet for it. If she hadn’t stabbed Emily’s father, Emily’s life wouldn’t have been destroyed. So Emily tracks Juliet down – although she’s in the witness protection program – and plans an elaborate revenge.
Although Byrne deliberately doesn’t specify for a long time exactly what revenge Emily took, it was pretty obvious to me from early on more or less what it was going to be. Although the plot was interesting and engaging, it wasn’t the most important thing about the novel for me.
I loved the way that Byrne got inside Emily’s head and presented us with an engrossing and sympathetic picture of a young woman who is, frankly, quite mentally unbalanced. There’s definitely something off with Emily’s reasoning – let alone her actions – but Byrne draws us in to her perspective. We never quite forget that it’s an unreasonable way of viewing the world, but we can still see how Emily gets there. We sympathise with her pain and her problems; and although we have a nasty fear about what she’s going to do next we’re also quite hypnotised by it. At times she’s a normal teenage girl; at times her obsession rises to the top again and she’s someone we hope never to meet.
This is what made the novel so good for me – not so much what the crisis point was going to be, but how exactly Emily was going to get there and whether she was ultimately going to come to some recognition that she couldn’t keep thinking this way if she was ever to reclaim her life. I don’t want to meet Emily, but I really appreciated this portrait of her – Byrne has done a great job of creating a memorable character.
Mind you, the novel has other things going for it. All the characters are strong. The plot is credible. The sense of place is quite vivid. And the writing style is involving and easy; it’s not hard to turn page after page.
Highly recommended; this was an extremely good novel. Thanks for the chance to read it!
From the first chapter this book had me hooked. The story is continually engaging, revealing snipits of what has happened to cause main character to be in her current position as it goes, not leaving all the detail until the very end. The main character never tries to be liked or likable, but continues to be honest and I quickly became fascinated with her story. Further, the way the author has written the story makes it completely believable that it could have been written by the 17yr old protagonist. This book is well and truly worth a read!