I wish the story was a little more realistic, instead of trying to make Kate look all kinds of miserable. And actually I find it really hard to believe, how none of the teachers noticed the abuse Kate was undergoing both in school and at home, for eight years. The narrative is not attractive, and after awhile I lost the interest to read, even if the story seemed to be the kind I usually like.
( )

17-year-old Kate has lived her whole life in abject poverty, with an alcoholic father and drug-addicted mother, who severely abuses Kate. At school, her second-hand clothing marks her as a target. Her refusal to stand up for herself makes her the recipient of her classmates taunts and bullying.

Right there are four of the five things I expect to find in an abuse story. (Speaking strictly as a hardened reader here) I realize, given the genre, that there isn’t much room for unprecedented imagination or groundbreaking creativity, but Heart On A Chain was just another predictable and typical abuse story.

This one is about a shell of a girl named Kate. I felt really bad for her through the entire book, and I felt relieved when Henry started helping her. To me it was unbearably sweet and overdramatic, but as a rule of thumb I don’t read much Young Adult because I’ve never really liked it.

And lastly, on a completely unrelated note here, the cover of this one was a serious turn off! All I could think was, why is there a muggle Luna Lovegood standing there?



SEE?

If you liked this you might also like: [b:Sweethearts|2020935|Sweethearts|Sara Zarr|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1336053590s/2020935.jpg|2799404] by [a:Sara Zarr|19093|Sara Zarr|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1302718823p2/19093.jpg] ( )

This book has received so many 5 star reviews that I was sure I was going to love it, but it felt so overdone and dramatic that I didn't really care that much. However, I have a feeling that my middle school kids who want more books like A Child Called It will love it. There were many things I didn't find believable, so it was hard to invest myself in Kate's problems. She huddles in a corner on the floor every lunch and no adult notices? She's beaten up several times (once actually in the school) and everyone just calmly accepts her falling or accident stories? It all felt very contrived - just a way to make the story more heartbreaking. And then at the end a certain character had a 180 degree turn around that was completely ludicrous. However, there was a sweet love story and a happy ending.

Areas of concern:
No bad language. Some kissing. Violent abuse perpetrated on the main character several times. ( )

Tears just simply stream from my eyes constantly while reading this book, right from the start. It's just so heartbreaking but the heroine's resilience is very... comforting. In the middle of reading till dawn, I literally cried myself to sleep and woke up with swollen and very sore eyes. Then I grabbed my reader, too excited to know what happens next to Kate and Henry.

While I cried my heart out the entire time, I still find it fun, cute, and the romance part—very fulfilling. I love that I got so many different scenes from the story but it never dragged out for me; the story just flows and I never got bored.

I generally stir away from angsty novels but this one's golden—ended up in my fav list. Tragedy in reverse. ( )

Originally posted at Romance Around the Corner

I’m having a hard time rating this book. Just based on entertainment value it deserves a high grade because I found it addictive and engrossing, I couldn’t stop reading. However, it’s seriously flawed. If you want to enjoy the book your BS-meter has to be turned off or else you won’t handle how over the top and extreme this book is.

Henry and Kate were best friends their whole life. When they were in sixth grade their friendship developed into something deeper but Henry moved away leaving Kate alone. Six years later Henry is back but things have dramatically changed. Kate’s life became a living hell: her drug addict mother is volatile, extremely violent and abusive; her father is an alcoholic and is seldom at home, and when he is he either ignores what’s going or beats his wife; and at school she is a pariah, everyone bullies her, she’s afraid to do or say the wrong thing and she keeps to herself as much as she can. Now Henry is back and Kate is sure that the kind boy she used to know is now another tormentor, so even though he tries to talk to her, she just ignores him and even hides from him.

We know that Henry is good and means well, but Kate has a ton of reasons to be dubious and so he has a lot of work to do. Slowly he wins her over and Kate finds a safe haven in Henry. They rekindle their friendship and soon fall in love with each other. But things are bad and soon get worse, so when Kate finds herself in trouble and in need of help she turns to Henry, who doesn’t even realize that Kate’s troubles go beyond school bullying.

This is drama at its best. Here we have a girl who is being tortured by everyone around her -and since she is the narrator we get to see in painful detail how bad things are-. She doubts everything, any act of kindness must be concealing something mean that will soon follow, she keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, she eats in the floor because she’s afraid of sitting at a table and she gets beaten constantly both at home and at school. But suddenly this dreamy, perfect guy comes to save the day. He is popular, beautiful and in love with her. He helps her, actively pursues hers, and defends her. He is the personification of a knight in shining armor. Personally, I love stories like this one where the heroine is the underdog and the hero is the popular prince. It's like a retelling of the Cinderella story, if Cinderella was beaten by everyone, including the cute little animals and the Fairy Godmother.

I don’t want to go into details as to not spoil the story, but the things that happened to her were unbelievable not because violence like that isn’t real, but because no one noticed it. She ate on the floor, she was beaten on a regular basis both at home and at school, she was hungry, and yet no one saw it? Where were the teachers? How could they not see what was in front of their eyes? And then you get to the twists, turns and revelations, and that's when the real WTFckery begins.

Kate was a contradiction. She was both weak and strong, but to be honest I didn’t see how it was possible for her to have the energy to fight.

“Besides being starved, sometimes for days on end?” I ask, caustically. “Or do you mean other than being forced to stand in a corner for hours at a time? Or there’s always the classic forcing me to sit in the closet for a few days, knowing that when she let me out I would be beaten, because it’s impossible to go that long without going to the bathroom. Also, I don’t suppose it’s normal to get hit, pinched, slapped or kicked for breathing the wrong way.”

That’s how extreme the abuse was. Henry was perfect, too perfect. At this point I wasn’t expecting much realism, and since he was the only good thing to happen to Kate I was glad he was so good, but in real life no one is that supportive, or maybe they are, but they also have parents that freak out when their son gets so close to someone in so much trouble. The parents in this book don’t call the cops when their son’s friend gets beaten to a pulp, and then invite her to spend Christmas in Florida with them.

It sounds like a pretty awful book, right? Well it’s not. If you’re sensitive to violence and abuse, then run for the hills, but if you can handle it and you like drama and angst, then you must read it because it’s as entertaining as it gets. I cried, and cried, and cried, then snorted when the plot got ridiculous, and then cried some more. There’s a happy ending that was pleasantly surprising in its realism, especially after all the craziness, and I liked it.

It’s flawed and slightly crazy, but I loved it! Read it knowing what you’re getting into and enjoy it for what it is. I’m giving it a 3 because it’s far from perfect, but I do recommend it. ( )