The Wrong Heart By Jennifer Hartmann
The Wrong Heart by Jennifer Hartmann - Standalone contemporary romance
Tropes: Contemporary Romance, Friends to Lovers, Grumpy x Sunshine, Grief, Slow Burn, Angsty Romance, Emotional Damage, Opposites Attract, Found Family, Standalone
Summary:
From USA Today bestselling author Jennifer Hartmann comes an angsty standalone contemporary romance. This one deals with heavy themes, including the loss of a loved one and self-harm and suicide, so please check the content warnings before you begin.
BOOK REVIEW
Five stars, and quite possibly one of my favourite reads of the entire year. Jennifer Hartmann can do no wrong and I have stopped pretending to be objective about it.
The premise alone is devastating. A widow reaches out to the man walking around with her husband's heart in his chest. That's it, that's the hook, and in less careful hands it could be pure emotional manipulation. Hartmann does not do that. She sits in the discomfort of it, lets it be strange and complicated and occasionally unbearable, and never once uses the setup as a shortcut to feeling.
Melody is the best part. She is not a tidy griever. She is angry and lost and trying so hard to find the bright person she used to be, and watching her fail at that before she slowly gets somewhere real is what makes the whole book work. And Parker, God. Closed off to the point of being difficult, carrying his own damage, absolutely not equipped to be anybody's healing. Which is precisely why they are so good together.
The support group scenes wrecked me. The secrets, when they land, recontextualise so much of what came before. And Hartmann's writing does the thing it always does: makes you laugh two lines before it takes your legs out.
Please take the content warnings seriously with this one, it goes to some genuinely heavy places. But if you can, read it. It's grief and hope in the same hands, and it is exceptional.
“I'm Charlie's sun, and I'm Parker's moon. I can be both. I'm an eclipse.”
If you loved Still Beating, Lotus or Pieces of the Night, The Wrong Heart belongs at the top of your list. A widow, her husband's heart recipient, and a slow, aching journey from grief to something like hope. Jennifer Hartmann at her absolute best, and one of our favourite reads of the year.
