one way or another
Author : Tanya Byrne
Title : Heart-shaped Bruise
Published : 27/10/2012
Pages : 336
Genre : Young adult / mystery thriller
Publisher : Headline
They say I'm evil. The police. The newspapers. The girls from school who sigh on the six o'clock news and say they always knew there was something not quite right about me. And everyone believes it. Including you. But you don't know. You don't know who I used to be. Who I could have been. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever shake off my mistakes or if I'll just carry them around with me forever like a bunch of red balloons. Awaiting trial at Archway Young Offenders Institution, Emily Koll is going to tell her side of the story for the first time.
I have a soft spot when it comes to Y/A crime novels. I tend to read them as soon as I find a new one. But this is easy easier said than done when it comes to finding a new one. Most of the sites I buy books from tending to lump all young adult novels into one genre. So it was a bit of a sideways route that brought this book to attention. Having spent several hours skipping from one site to the next I finally found a U.S retailer who actually broke Y/A down by individual sub-genres. It was then back to my usual sites to order a copy.
It is not often that we get to experience a crime book from the perspective of the culprit. I guess it's because most authors chose to make this the catalyst for their stories. The hunt for the killer's identity becomes all consuming. But Byrne did away with all this in fact as her story starts Emily is already in a young offenders unit awaiting trial for the crimes she committed. A bold step yet one that comes with its own set of benefits.
The book is laid out in the style of Emily's diary which she has stanched away. This not only allows her to tell her story in a form the papers and news will not allow her to do but it also allowed me to get some insight into her thought process and how she was driven by her emotions. By choosing this route it allowed me to connect with a character who otherwise I don't think I would have been able to. This is a girl whose life is set on a completely different trajectory by events she has no control over. Had this been written from any of the other characters perspectives it would have been far to easy to write her off as some complete nut job.
Emily felt to me to be a more fleshed out character because of how we learn her story. You get to see that she can be funny and witty. And at times struggles to reconcile her self with the action she chose to take. All of this allows her story to come floating off the page into the real world. She genuinely feels like a real teenager her actions follow a logic that makes total sense given these parameters. This is not to say that she entirely trusts worthy or for that matter likeable. By her own admission, she is prone to lying and exaggerating the truth. but all of this makes her a deeper and more interesting person to learn about.
This is a story about people feeding of their most basic instincts in the search for some form of justice. And how feeding of these raw emotions can take you to some very dark places. In Emily's cases, the author did an amazing job of showing how someone can completely lose them self in their obsessions. Even when she has moments of clarity about the path she has chosen they a fleeting. I felt that Emily is not the only characters in this book suffering from the actions their parents have put out into the world. This is a dark story about a person you shouldn't care for in the slightest. And while I cannot condone the action she chose to commit fundamentally because she didn't have to do it. I did care about her even knowing from the start where she ends up. For me, the author did an incredible job of worming her character into my heart. I found myself wanting to see the best outcome for her even though I know she did a very bad bad thing. It's kind of a strange place to find myself in but it was defiantly an enjoyable and interesting read.
I have a soft spot when it comes to Y/A crime novels. I tend to read them as soon as I find a new one. But this is easy easier said than done when it comes to finding a new one. Most of the sites I buy books from tending to lump all young adult novels into one genre. So it was a bit of a sideways route that brought this book to attention. Having spent several hours skipping from one site to the next I finally found a U.S retailer who actually broke Y/A down by individual sub-genres. It was then back to my usual sites to order a copy.
It is not often that we get to experience a crime book from the perspective of the culprit. I guess it's because most authors chose to make this the catalyst for their stories. The hunt for the killer's identity becomes all consuming. But Byrne did away with all this in fact as her story starts Emily is already in a young offenders unit awaiting trial for the crimes she committed. A bold step yet one that comes with its own set of benefits.
The book is laid out in the style of Emily's diary which she has stanched away. This not only allows her to tell her story in a form the papers and news will not allow her to do but it also allowed me to get some insight into her thought process and how she was driven by her emotions. By choosing this route it allowed me to connect with a character who otherwise I don't think I would have been able to. This is a girl whose life is set on a completely different trajectory by events she has no control over. Had this been written from any of the other characters perspectives it would have been far to easy to write her off as some complete nut job.
Emily felt to me to be a more fleshed out character because of how we learn her story. You get to see that she can be funny and witty. And at times struggles to reconcile her self with the action she chose to take. All of this allows her story to come floating off the page into the real world. She genuinely feels like a real teenager her actions follow a logic that makes total sense given these parameters. This is not to say that she entirely trusts worthy or for that matter likeable. By her own admission, she is prone to lying and exaggerating the truth. but all of this makes her a deeper and more interesting person to learn about.
This is a story about people feeding of their most basic instincts in the search for some form of justice. And how feeding of these raw emotions can take you to some very dark places. In Emily's cases, the author did an amazing job of showing how someone can completely lose them self in their obsessions. Even when she has moments of clarity about the path she has chosen they a fleeting. I felt that Emily is not the only characters in this book suffering from the actions their parents have put out into the world. This is a dark story about a person you shouldn't care for in the slightest. And while I cannot condone the action she chose to commit fundamentally because she didn't have to do it. I did care about her even knowing from the start where she ends up. For me, the author did an incredible job of worming her character into my heart. I found myself wanting to see the best outcome for her even though I know she did a very bad bad thing. It's kind of a strange place to find myself in but it was defiantly an enjoyable and interesting read.
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