Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - Shark Heart: A love story

I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't to cry over a great white shark being lonely in the ocean. This was ultimately a portrait of grief and felt very much like a fever dream coping mechanism for someone who has experienced great and traumatic loss. This is a fast read - extremely easy to binge read in one sitting, but it is of the "weird" variety - duh. I recommend picking this up if you need to escape the reality of your own grief (or if you want to have a wild experience).

Content Warnings

okiecozyreader's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious fast-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

I started out loving the descriptions and longing for Oklahoma, but I came to love the relationships in this book - husband and wife, mother and daughter.

“She missed the illusion of grass and sky kissing at the end of the world.
She missed standing amid a rustling chorus of wind-waving grasses, the four horsemen of the tallgrass prairie - little bluestem, big bluestem, Indian grass, and switchgrass. She missed May fields dotted with black-eyed Susans, Indian blanket, and coreopsis. She missed bursts of red clay topsoil along dirt roads. She missed the smell emanating from meat smokers, the way the grocery store was always empty on Sunday mornings, good thirty-dollar haircuts, and scissor-tailed flycatchers, suspended like supermen in hot, dry air. She missed the evenings most of all: the grapefruit sun hovering above the prairie, dismissing the day with unpredictable strokes of cantaloupe, fuchsia, and violet.” P35

Wren and Lewis celebrate their first year of marriage, and soon thereafter, he realizes something is wrong with his body, and finds out he is mutating into a great white shark. His loving wife Wren takes care of him as his body and mind transform, and he loses the ability to direct the school play, and acting is one of his great loves. But their love for each other is incredibly beautiful.

“When Lewis finally came to bed, he took sleeping Wren's hand in his and closed his eyes, seeing if he could sense her electrical field.
"What... What are you doing?" she asked groggily.
"Just seeing what it's like to love you when I can't see you." P70

In part 2, we go back to Wren’s childhood and learn about her mother Angela. It was a totally different story, but while reading the first part, I wondered about her mother, and appreciated the backstory, even though it was difficult in many ways.

In part 3 we go back to Lewis in current day and then to Wren. I loved the mother and daughter story and how the author writes in the Acknowledgments, “When I write of a mother's love, I write not from the experience of being one myself but from being a daughter who has been so, so lucky to be loved by parents like you.” Throughout the book, I felt that love.

“Wren no longer sees life as a long, linear ladder with a beginning, middle, and end.
Instead, she considers how life is like a spiraling trail up a mountain. Each circling lap represents a learning cycle, the same lesson at a slightly higher elevation. Wren realizes she likes to rest as much as she likes to climb. She begins to enjoy the view.” P 397

“Angela had been grieving Marcos almost as long as she'd known him, and finally, like a rainbow against a bruise-hued cloud, she saw the real Marcos--not as an idea, dream, hope, or possibility - but as he really was,
Marcos drew an outline of a person who was generous, wise, and kind. and Angela's longing animated his image with life and color. This two-dimensional Marcos, the one she imagined, was never real.” P274

“And then Lewis caved, as usual, to the chatter of resistance, the recita-ton of his very important responsibilities, the weighty things that would require all his life force, attention, and creative energy, why he should not do the thing that was, deep down, most important to him.” P35

Content Warnings

blakeandbooks's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

farrahwho's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

The surface of love was a feeling, but beyond this thin layer, there was a fathomless, winding maze of caverns offering many places to see and explore. Wren used to think romantic passion only grew more intense in the depths. But this belief was naive and impractical, a by-product of a certainty-obsessed culture that equates love with longing and views ambivalence as a fatal flaw. Wren saw now how passion was delicate and temporary, a visitor, a feeling that would come and go. Feelings fled under pressure; feelings did not light the darkness. What remained strong in the deep, the hard times, was love as an effort, a doing, a conscious act of will. Soulmates, like her and Lewis, were not theoretical and found. They were tangible, built.

this has lots of my favorite things: lyrical prose, exploring themes of love, loss, grief, hope, change, and relationships; magic realism elements (human-to-wild animal mutations). it was so easy to care for the characters and empathize with their experiences. i want to give wren a hug so bad!!

however, it is structured in one of my least favorite ways of story telling which is though a series of non-linear vignettes making it hard to follow at times. the vignettes seem to get sparser throughout, leaving much to be desired. it also experiments with formatting in the sense that some "chapters" are written as scenes of a play which is fitting given lewis's character, but i felt like there were many times where the flow of the story was disrupted because of it.

might be a nonsensical comparison to make but the writing style gave me slight alone with you in the ether meets our wives under the sea vibes? so if enjoyed the prose in those, there's a chance you'll like shark heart as well

overall, i still really enjoyed this as much as it broke then mended my heart. giving it a 3.75, but it is practically a 4 star

Content Warnings

kelseyr713's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

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

5.0

This is one of the most beautiful, fascinating, and lyrical novels I've ever read. Highly recommended.

Content Warnings

carlyjb16's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Content Warnings

silversparkles50's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

rover_under's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional funny hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book is a much faster read than the page count suggests, owing to its unique style. Some scenes are written as screenplays or diary entries that extend to only one or two sentences per page. I enjoyed the book. It was heartfelt and its allegory toward illness and death felt impactful and was used well.

I don't know if I have the life experience to evaluate the book in this way, but despite the absurd premise of the book, the subject matter was handled well.

One thing I was confused by is the author's choice to hide Wren and her mother's mutation until late in the book. I initially excused it as being part of the past self that Wren had chosen to leave behind, but Lewis seemed to know all of it, though I can't recall it referenced in the first part of the book when he's going though his metamorphosis. It felt awkward and strange to have not been told since I'd initially thought it was Wren hiding it from the other characters.

Otherwise I think it's a fantastic book with a very engaging style, and I would fully recommend it for anyone who felt comfortable with the subject matter discussed.

Content Warnings

More...