A review by haveyoumetlisa
Hello, Cruel Heart by Maureen Johnson

2.0

I usually love Maureen Johnson's books, and the upcoming Cruella movie looks like fun, so I thought I'd try this book out. It should not have taken two weeks for me to read it, but I just could not get into it. It is a character study, with no real plot driving the story, which I was not prepared for and added to the drag. Also, this book is not about a teenage Cruella, it's about a teenage Estella, and how people are kind of mean to her, so she embraces meanness in the last two pages. It was very anticlimactic and boring, and I don't know how it leads into the movie, but I hope the movie is better.

SPOILER! Cruella is a personality inside of Estella...? Cruella is definitely a distinct voice in her head, who appears some times, and others recognize that something "was Cruella, not Estella". But the book does not dive into dissociative identity disorder or mental illness, it just vaguely hints at it with seemingly no understanding of the real condition, only pop psychology, which is kind of awful.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free digital copy for review, all opinions are my own.