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A review by mirrorballsagittarius
My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga
2.0
This book is really hard to rate. Especially towards the beginning of the book the writing was pretty poor and extremely cringeworthy. I don’t know if it got better or if I just got used to it...
I did become invested in the story and characters, but it was in more of a guilty pleasure way because I recognised that the story was quite predictable and the characters were pretty one-dimensional.
- suicide tw and some spoilers for the book -
I could probably give it three stars for a fun and easy read, but the way it dealt with mental health pisses me off too much. I hate that many YA writers seem to think they need to create some novel and bizarre premise to write about mental health. The suicide partners and the website was so unrealistic and didn’t utilise the possible symbolism of it in any way to make up for it. This paved the way for a very shallow exploration of mental health and suicide. I’m very glad I didn’t read this book when I was younger because of how it details possible methods of suicide and despite the unravelling of this by the end, the majority of the book did normalise suicide/suicidal ideation.
I also HATE that Aysel only started to realise the worth of her life after falling in love. Some other aspects are acknowledged but the main focus was on how this boy ‘saved her’. What a crappy and overused idea to present to a young audience. I would have much preferred if the relationship was kept platonic. The romantic development was done pretty poorly anyway.
Overall, I can forgive the different aspects of poor writing and story development, mostly because it’s honestly not that different to a lot of contemporary YA books I’ve read...But I can’t forgive the harmful way this deals with mental health/suicide, and it angers me that this is praised as “a fearless, taboo-busting debut, sensitive and authentic” (written on the cover of my book).
I did become invested in the story and characters, but it was in more of a guilty pleasure way because I recognised that the story was quite predictable and the characters were pretty one-dimensional.
- suicide tw and some spoilers for the book -
I could probably give it three stars for a fun and easy read, but the way it dealt with mental health pisses me off too much. I hate that many YA writers seem to think they need to create some novel and bizarre premise to write about mental health. The suicide partners and the website was so unrealistic and didn’t utilise the possible symbolism of it in any way to make up for it. This paved the way for a very shallow exploration of mental health and suicide. I’m very glad I didn’t read this book when I was younger because of how it details possible methods of suicide and despite the unravelling of this by the end, the majority of the book did normalise suicide/suicidal ideation.
I also HATE that Aysel only started to realise the worth of her life after falling in love. Some other aspects are acknowledged but the main focus was on how this boy ‘saved her’. What a crappy and overused idea to present to a young audience. I would have much preferred if the relationship was kept platonic. The romantic development was done pretty poorly anyway.
Overall, I can forgive the different aspects of poor writing and story development, mostly because it’s honestly not that different to a lot of contemporary YA books I’ve read...But I can’t forgive the harmful way this deals with mental health/suicide, and it angers me that this is praised as “a fearless, taboo-busting debut, sensitive and authentic” (written on the cover of my book).