Reviews - Heartsease | The StoryGraph

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26 reviews for:

Heartsease

Kate Kruimink

3.97 AVERAGE

a_b_hall's review against another edition

3.5

dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

indoorg1rl's review against another edition

4.0

Charlotte ('Lot') and Ellen ('Nelly') are sisters who were once so close, but a great deal has changed since their mother's death, years before. Clever, beautiful, gentle Lot has been a dutiful older sister for much younger Nelly, who’s still haunted by their mother in her early thirties. When the pair meet at a silent retreat in a strange old house in the Tasmanian countryside, the spectres of memory are unleashed.

Not gonna lie, it took me a while to understand the structure of this book and where it was going. While this was a contemporary book, figuring out the alternating chapters and how they clicked together was a mystery for me to solve. Once I realised what was going on though, it was a lightbulb moment, and I immediately understood the story.

The scenes and dialogues were deceivingly ‘simple’, with the unsettling retreat and Nelly’s haunting mother playing in the background. I loved that the line between reality and imagination was blurred. At the end of the day, it was a heartbreaking, heartfelt story.

This was a beautifully written book, even if it required more efforts from the readers to fully understand.

(Thanks to Pan Macmillan Australia for a gifted copy in exchange for an honest review)

jaclyncrupi's review

4.0

Heartsease is so structurally interesting. At first I was confused by the switches from Nelly’s first person narrative to Lot’s third person perspective (in which Nelly has just died no less). But these perspective shifts allow us to explore the layers of grief and connection between these two sisters who lost their mother far too young. Another challenge Kruimink gives herself is to set the first section of Nelly’s perspective in a silent retreat. Once you start to appreciate the perspective shifts and timeline you can just enjoy getting to know and understand these women and how they navigate through the world. The prose is beautifully written. This was a delightful surprise of a novel that caught me off guard with its close examination of grief, old and new.