Reviews

i absolutely loved it!

heaven is about embracing your weaknesses and finding beauty in a world that doesn’t accept you for being different. it is about will, and hanging on when you so desperately want to give up.

phina04's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

bkoz's review against another edition

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emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.0

margaux707's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.0

tiareadsbooks25's review against another edition

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4.0

•read•
4.3/5⭐

⚠️TW: BULLYING, SUICIDE IDEATION, VIOLENCE, SELF-HARM, DEPRESSION, ATTEMPTED RAPE⚠️

In Heaven, a 14-year-old boy known only as Eyes is the target of vicious bullying because of his lazy eye. His classmate Kojima, makes an offer of friendship to him; she too experiences bullying at school due to her dirty appearance. They develop a special bond and find solace in one another because they have experienced similar things and feel the same emotions.

I've read this novel twice; the English version was the first, followed by the Indonesian translation. Upon rereading the novel, I still firmly believe that this novel should be titled HELL instead of HEAVEN.

Though I've read several bullying-themed novels, I think this one to be the most severe. We can all see the protagonist's suffering in all forms. The author depicts the bullying scenes so explicitly and in detail, that it made me shocked, uneasy, and furious. I even tried to read this novel swiftly as I could no longer bear the anguish. I hoped for the two of them to join forces and make an attempt against the perpetrators, but sadly, it wasn't to be. I found it annoying that Eyes and Kojima chose to accept their circumstances with such helplessness and hopelessness.

Tbh, I'm not quite satisfied with the ending, since it ends abruptly. We don't know what happened to Kojima and the perpetrators following the Whale Park incident, other than that Eyes finally gets his lazy eye fixed.

In addition, this novel conveys the fact that bullying is a commonplace occurrence in schools and a systemic problem. I still find it hard to understand why perpetrators believe that bullying is normal and how easy it is for them to torment others for no apparent reason brutally.

All in all, I'm aware that not everyone can enjoy this novel, but I still heartily recommend it. Yet, be sure to heed the trigger warning—for some people, it may evoke painful memories. I'd say that Heaven is a riveting novel about bullying with a profound and meaningful message that is beautifully written, and deeply felt.

#tiareadsbooks #tiawritesreviews

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FAVE QUOTES:

❝It's funny, but when I'm doing nothing, I get this feeling like I'm fighting something. Stick... fighting. It never goes away, even when I'm in bed, even when I'm walking around.❞
—Page 12-13

❝Without school, I could get by without seeing anyone or being seen by anyone. It was like being a piece of furniture in a room that nobody uses. I can't express how safe it felt never being seen.❞
—Page 48

❝Because we’re always in pain, we know exactly what it means to hurt somebody else.❞
—Page 64

❝Maybe we are weak, in a way. But that’s not a bad thing. If we’re weak, our weakness has real meaning. We may be weak, but we get it. We know what’s important, and we know what’s wrong. That’s just not true for anyone else in class.❞
—Page 92

❝At first, suicide was just a word, a vague idea separate from reality. It pointed at a way that other people chose to die, people I didn't even know. But once the word became my own, it took on the strangest shape. I could feel it growing deep inside of me. Suicide wasn't something that happened to strangers. I could make it happen, if I wanted to.❞
—Page 103

❝What is dying anyway? I let this impossible question fill the darkness of my bedroom. I thought about how somebody was always dying somewhere, at any given moment. This isn’t a fable or a joke or an abstract idea. People are always dying. It’s a perfect truth. No matter how we live our lives, we all die sooner or later. In which case, living is really just waiting to die. And if that’s true, why bother living at all? Why was I even alive? I made myself crazy, tossing and turning, hyperventilat- ing. Then it hit me: dying is just like sleeping. You only know you’re sleeping when you wake up the next day, but if morn- ing never comes, you sleep forever. That must be what death is like. When someone dies, they don’t even know they’re dead. Because they never see it happen, nobody ever really dies. This hit me like a sucker punch.❞
—Page 104

❝There is no beautiful world where everyone thinks the same way and understand each other perfectly, it doesn’t exist. You think it does, but it is not real.❞
—Page 116

❝For people to actually live by some golden rule, we’d have to be living in a world with no contradictions. But we don’t live in a world like that. No one does. People do what works for them, whatever makes them feel good. But because nobody likes getting stepped on, people start spouting crap about being good to others, being considerate, whatever. Tell me I’m wrong. Everyone does things they don’t want people doing back. Predators eat prey, and school serves no real purpose other than separating the kids who have what it takes from the ones who don’t. That’s the whole point. Everywhere you look, the strong walk all over the weak. Even those fools who think they’ve found the answers by coming up with perfect little sayings about how the world ought to be can’t escape it. Because the real world is everywhere.❞
—Page 119

❝Listen, if there's a hell, we're in it. And if there's a heaven, we're already there. This is it.❞
—Page 120

❝Even if something happens to us, even if we die and never have to deal with them again, the same thing will happen to someone, somewhere. The same thing. The weak always go through this, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Because the strong never go away. That’s why you want to pretend to be like them, isn’t it? You want to join them.❞
—Page 133

❝Everything that I could see was beautiful. I cried and cried, standing there, surrounded by that beauty, even though I wasn’t standing anywhere. I could hear the sound of my own tears. Everything was beautiful. Not that there was anyone to share it with, anyone to tell. Just the beauty.❞
—Page 167

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