My Heart is Hurting by S.E. Reed
My Heart is Hurting by S.E. Reed
My Heart is Hurting was the 14th place finalist in BBNYA 2024!
About BBNYA
BBNYA is a yearly competition where book bloggers from all over the world read and score books written by indie authors, ending with 15 finalists (16 in 2024) and one overall winner.
If you want some more information about BBNYA, check out the BBNYA Website https://www.bbnya.com/ or take a peek over on Twitter @BBNYA_Official. BBNYA is brought to you in association with the book blogger support group @The_WriteReads.
RECOMMENDED: Highly
Bookshop (Affiliate): https://bookshop.org/a/12882/9781958531259
Indie Story Geek: https://indiestorygeek.com/story/5478
Amazon Link: https://a.co/d/6yyoV0s (Canada) https://a.co/d/26frbTP (USA) https://amzn.eu/d/5t9ma1H (UK)
Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/152331826-my-heart-is-hurting
The Story Graph Link: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/57cec67e-2070-4d7a-a789-ca8fcef4e11a
Blurb
Jinny Buffett is lonely…
She’s never had the comfort of a white picket fence with a loving family. Her subsidized apartment in Hollywood Florida echoes with the void of her dead Daddy, and the nights drag long into twilight while her Mama works the block outside the Margaritaville resort.
It’s idealistic Ms. Fleming, who’s brave enough to come knocking first. She wants to see Jinny rise up and use her ace scores to escape the wheel of poverty, convincing Jinny to start a school book club, where she finds the friends and boyfriend she never knew she needed.
But when her Mama spirals out of control and threatens her entire existence, it’s Jinny’s Everglade ancestors who arrive in a mist of magic, bringing the swamp and hope with them.
Queer Rep Summary: No canon queer rep.
*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book.
MY HEART IS HURTING seemed very much outside of my comfort zone but I was quickly drawn in. It is a coming of age story, of a sort, but the focus is on Jinny trying to build a life with friends in a new school year. When her mother keeps leaving for days or weeks at a time, Jinny has more daily freedom but is more vulnerable if anything goes wrong. As her home life spirals and her mother is alternatingly abusive and neglectful, Jinny is trying to keep things stable, not able to trust the offers of help from her favorite teacher or her new friend’s mom.
One of the strengths of MY HEART IS HURTING is the way it doesn’t ever slip and have Jinny suddenly figure out things about her situation that she doesn’t have the context to process. She’s a kid in an abusive situation whose mother is trying at every turn to put her down and exploit her. It takes a lot for her to finally think her mama might be wrong about whether anyone else will help, and even more for her to let them. There’s just enough description of the various adults who try to do something earlier for it to be clear that they suspect something is wrong, but they definitely haven’t put together how bad things are for Jinny. The more her teachers or the principal say she’s smart, the more she’s scared that her mama will hurt her for being smarter than she is. Compliments they mean to be supportive just feed her insecurities, because she’s been told those are bad things to be. Jinny knows she doesn’t want the life her mama has, but doesn’t have a sense of what the options are. It’s deeply immersive, showing the world as Jinny sees it, misunderstood by most people around her because they don’t understand what’s wrong, so their proffered solutions feel generic and misguided.
If you like this you may like:
- Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson
- Just Happy to Be Here by Naomi Kanakia
- The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum
Graphic/Explicit CW for neglect, abandonment, emotional abuse, child abuse.
Moderate CW for cursing, ableism, grief, bullying, gaslighting, body shaming, fatphobia, physical abuse, vomit, car accident, kidnapping, trafficking, gun violence, medical content, injury detail, parental death, death.
Minor CW for homophobia, drug use.
Author Bio
S.E. Reed lives in the south and writes strange, haunting, real stories of people and places along old highways.
Winner of the 2024 Florida Book Awards and the 2024 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People.
Additionally, she's been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won honorable mention twice in L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest.
You can find her on X @writingwithreed or visit her website www.writingwithreed.com .
Comments
Post a Comment