I would recommend this story to all thriller lovers. This book took me by surprise. It kept me interested throughout the story and I needed to see what was going to happen. I truly enjoyed the pacing of the story and the well-written characters.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to finish this book, and cannot provide substantial feedback. I really liked what I have read, and hope to finish it when I have the chance!

The premise of the book is great and the author really delivers. Great read. Highly recommended. .

I had a hard time getting through Heartbreaker. There were moments and scenes that I really enjoyed that were very well written. However, the plot took some weird twists that didn't fit with the better parts of the novel.

Loved this story, and the writing was superb. I can’t wait to read what this author puts out next. Would certainly gift this book to a friend.

This book is missing some major elements. I LOVE Stranger Things. This is nothing like it. Some 80's but it's so scattered. Next, they say it's like Handmaids Tale. Um... no. Sorry, just no. The drama is missing and I can't find a correlation that holds up. Twin Peaks - Possibly. I found Twin Peaks to be disjointed and I found this book to be disjointed as well. It took me ages to get through it because I lost interest over and over. I'm sorry I don't have a better review of it, but I feel like it is misleading and needs some major re-working to organize the book content. I didn't connect to anyone or anything and that was just... awful.

My copy came from Net Galley. My review is my own sans any compensation whatsoever.

the 80's...what else can I say. The dialogue was a bit too much at times but the book was overall a good one if you stuck through it and heard each perspective.

A well written drama/mystery that captivates the reader and gives you a view from each characters perspective.

While I really wanted to like this book-cults, 80's nostalgia, mystery, everything I would normally love-the writing style of this book made it hard to follow at times. If you can make it through, it's an interesting and intriguing read, but I found myself needing to put it down and revisit it after several days to clear my head throughout it.

Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for this early copy,

This was a strange but intriguing read for me.

There's nothing like a book with great 80's references. A nostalgic, enjoyable story! I enjoy writers that try to do something different, and that was seen here. 2018-2019 has given us such unforgettable reading!

This is a different book for sure, which makes it difficult to rate. I loved some parts of it, other bored me unfortunately.

I liked some of this book but not enough. Her writing is good and I think I get what she was trying to do but it fell completely flat for me.

I couldn't get past the first chapter because it kept jumping around and not making any sense. The main character's thought process is extremely disjointed and hinders the reader from making connections with what is going on in real time. I really loved the description of the novel, but after the first chapter, there was no way I could keep reading.

3.5/5. I won’t lie to you, this is a weird book. Not quirky-cute-hipster weird, just….weird. I wasn’t going to post about it, but here I am, three months later and I’m still thinking about it. To me, that’s often indicative of a good book. This is a rare case where I’m not actually sure, but I’d like to think so.

Perhaps it’s the constant stream of ’80s rock, perhaps it’s my fascination with cults, perhaps it is simply my love of the bizarre, but Heartbreaker has stuck with me.

Pony Darlene Fontaine. The Heavy. Supernatural. Billie Jean. Gena Rowlands. Those are the stars of this novel. They live in the year 1985, in perpetuity. Pony is 15 when her mother gets up to go to the store and doesn’t return. The novel is spent figuring the how and why of the Territory in which she lives, the how and why of being a teenager, and the mystery of Billie Jean herself.

As odd as Heartbreaker is, it’s undeniably imaginative and a fresh take on cult fiction. I haven’t read anything quite like it, and Pony’s voice is particularly compelling (as is Gena Rowlands’). While the Twin Peaks comparisons are apt, the Stranger Things comparisons are misleading. It can be hard to follow at times, but Heartbreaker is a journey worth taking.

Love the writing style. Hope the author continues to write more.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

I finished reading Claudia Day’s Heartbreaker over a month ago, but needed time to process the story before writing a full review. Over the past few weeks, though, I still haven’t fully processed everything that happened in this story. This might seem annoying to some people—not experiencing that sense of a complete story—but I’ve come to accept that’s part of what makes books so intriguing.


So what is it about Heartbreaker that left me feeling lost for so long? Honestly, I don’t even know where to start.

It could be the fact that I’m still not sure when this book is supposed to take place. Was it in the 80s, or perhaps closer to present day? Why is the community so isolated, with little to no idea of what is happening elsewhere? Why are the families so eerily connected? And why are all of the teenagers forced to give blood multiple times per week?

(Okay, I’ll admit the last one was answered by the end of the story, but part of me still wants to scream “WHY?!” about this one, because the idea of having that much blood taken from me is too bothersome.)

Everything about the story, from the setting to the main characters, just seems off. At first it’s confusing, but then you realize it’s because Pony (the main character and first narrator we meet) was born into a cult. That’s right, you better be ready for one wild ride with this book!

Heartbreaker is broken up into three parts, each told from a different character’s perspective. It tells the story of how Pony’s mother, Billie Jean Fontaine, has gone missing, and the community (referred to as The Territory) is trying to figure out what exactly happened to her. It jumps back and forth between flashbacks and the present, and forces the reader to piece together the story while slowly peeling back the blinds on this tiny community.

The first part of the book is told through Pony’s point of view, but the second part gets a whole new set of eyes. The transition is a strange one, as the next section is told from the point of view of Billie Jean’s dog. I’ll admit I’m not usually a fan of books told from the point of view of animals—I read Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis for a book club and hated it—but I actually enjoyed this section of the story. The dog’s perspective was quite unique, and added information to the story that you wouldn’t otherwise get from a human character.

The third and final part of the book is told through the point of view of Supernatural, one of Pony’s friends, who is an older boy in The Territory. Many of the girls have a crush on him, and I promise, his story will deliver a plot twist you’d never expect.

I’m not quite sure what genre to classify Heartbreaker as, but I do know it was good. At times I wasn’t entirely sure where the story was going, or what exactly was happening, but I knew that I had to see the characters through to the end and find out as much as I could about The Territory. It’s an eerily enchanting story that you will either love or hate, but I believe it definitely deserves a spot on your TBR.

There are so many things about this book that I really liked, and most of it is because I never knew where Claudia Dey was taking me. The story starts with a woman who has not left her room for months suddenly grabbing the keys to the family truck and taking off. We then learn that the community is something like a cult, something of a survivalist community, something of a weird little town that has it's own drama. I think that is what is so enthralling about this novel. You really do not know what you are looking at, and once you think that you have it figured out, the picture shifts and becomes something completely different. It is a kaleidoscope like narrative, not like it is jangled fragments but like the more the pages turn, the more the picture changes. Some of it seems kind of normal, everyday things (affairs, bad behavior, and secrets), whereas other parts just leave you scratching your head. And even after this novel is finished, some questions still linger, because the world that she has built is so off, so out of the realm of understanding throughout most of the novel, that you are like, "Wait! What?" This can be off-putting to some readers, but there are others that really enjoy this type of thing. I am in the latter group, and even though some of the questions are not answered, I am okay with that.

If I found a genie with three wishes, I might use my third for a prequel to this novel, one that tells the story of the group coming to this remote place, building a life for themselves, and actually modernizing a great deal of their weird, isolated existence (like how did they arrange to have supplies driven in once a week? What company does that?) It is definitely one of those novels that i have thought about quite a bit since I have finished it, not because I want more of the characters but because I want more of the world. As it is, this could be one of the few books that I read more than once. It is that interesting.

I received this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This took me a while to get to because I had a major move from Germany to Portugal. but I would recommend this title.

I was 20% into this book, and I had NO IDEA what I had read. It reads like a stream of consciousness. Jumping from one short snippet to another.

At times I wondered, is this really based in the 80s, or is this group of people stuck in a time warp based on being out in the middle of nowhere. I think the part that interested me about the story was the cult aspect. That wasn’t even mentioned until about 40% of the way through.

Maybe I just missed something?

I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.