If you're looking for a quick, fun romance than look no further than Hearts, Strings, and Other Breakable Things. When Edie Price moves into her estranged Aunt's house in the suburbs she makes a vow to herself that she's there to focus on her education, but soon she finds herself caught up between two different boys. Should she give her heart to the kind and creative boy next door who isn't available at all? Or should she go for the bad boy who makes her laugh, but might be too available? This kind of quick, dramatic contemporary is exactly the kind of book I find myself craving during the summer. This one was particularly romantic. I actually found myself just as torn between the two love interests as Edie was.

**4.5 Stars**

Thank you to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s Book Group and NetGalley for this opportunity to read this eArc.

I read this last night, thinking to go for some light teen romance story and a few hours later, past midnight, with my heart racing, I thought, THIS BOOK.

Reading the book, I thought, is this a Jane Austen Mansfield Park retelling?! Yes, I silently screamed it in my mind, as to not wake anyone up but I didn’t get the memo! The blurb said nothing obvious about it, except Mansfield is the town they live in? Duh – I should’ve caught that. And though I have never read Mansfield Park, I have watched the movie…a million times. I love Mansfield Park. I love the story of Fannie Price and her sweet love in the end. Now because I know the way Mansfield Park ends…I was feeling all kinds of conflicting emotions while reading Hearts, Strings and Other Breakable Things – (I love the title by the way)…because I did NOT want it to end like Jane Austen’s ending. Not that anything is wrong with Miss Austen’s version. But there is a character in HSAOBT (yes I just did that, sorry) that made me want a different ending!

Edie Price is in foster care but goes to live with her aunt Norah. She has two cousins, Julia and Maria, who try to give her a make-over and help her fit into their life. The sisters are always arguing and Maria is just over-the-top but I find her hilarious. There is a next door neighbor, Sebastian, who Edie shares childhood memories with, and who she has the biggest crush on. But alas, he has the perfect girlfriend, Claire. And Claire has a devastatingly handsome and player of a brother, Henry, who is breaking hearts left and right. Henry has his eye kind of trained on Edie – but she isn’t having it. Edie is smart, not into the materialistic things, she writes music, loves to read and pines for Sebastian.

Well…Henry and Edie, stole this book. If you know Mansfield Park then you know how it ends, but I was team Henry. He’s such a player but when that player falls in love, whew…it’s an amazing thing. So the ending was inevitable but oh Henry. There is a scene between Edie and Henry that just smolders, like there is no kissing involved, no sex, it’s innocent but it stopped my breath. 10 seconds of 🔥. It was funny, intense and sexy at the same time and I fell in love with Henry.

Speaking of sex – there are situations in the book, which I was fine with because Edie is coming of age and learning these things. She’s allowed to feel this way and dream these things, what teenager doesn’t when going through puberty? And with Sebastian and Henry around, who can blame her? 😅

Like Mansfield Park there are other things happening besides Edie’s love life. She’s dealing with a broken friendship with her BFF from back home who isn’t talking to her. I liked that Edie wasn’t perfect and did something she needed to own up to. She also has to figure out her future – what to do about college, missing her mom, and learning about love.

I absolutely loved this book and I only knocked off half a star because I wanted Henry to be the one. But it’s basically a 5 star read for me, so just round it up. HAHA. Henry and Edie’s relationship was the book, the sexual tension between them is off the charts and the sweet moments between are swoon worthy. I couldn’t sleep after I finished the book, thinking of THAT scene and how broken my heart was for him. 😫 🤣 Also um, can they make this book into a Netflix movie so I can see that scene come to life and like…rewatch it a million times? K – thanks!

So basically I need more books from this author ASAP – with more scenes like that particular one! This is a fantastic retelling and I am definitely adding this to my book collection.

This was a sweet romantic read full of heart. I adored the characters and the twists and turns the relationships took. This is a story full of heart, friendship, love and family. I found myself cheering for different characters at different times in the book and I was honestly unsure exactly where the author was heading. I will definitely look for more books by Firkins!

It’s good, it’s cheesy, and it’s good BECAUSE it’s cheesy, but honestly, rating-wise, it’s tricky to gauge just how good this was.

It’s addicting, for sure. Edie is a fine lead - she’s easy to understand, and while some of her decisions are questionable, she’s realistically messy and that, I think, is the exact point that HEARTS, STRINGS, AND OTHER BREAKABLE THINGS is trying to bring across. Did it succeed? Yep. I get it. I get its message. We’re good on that front.

On the plus side, this is addicting and totally readable (I, a slow reader, finished 90% in one sitting and would’ve read the whole thing then and there if I didn’t have to sleep), and it can join the ranks of books like Morgan Matson’s SAVE THE DATE that are meant to be adapted to the screen because it felt humorously cinematic, with a fully-fleshed-out cast of characters that are dying to be fan-cast. Dare I say it would make a better movie than book? Given that my primary issue is the writing style but not the concept, I’d say Aye.

So why dock two stars off the rating? Partly it’s a subjectivity thing - the writing style and I didn’t fully click because there were lots of weird references and weirder similes sprinkled every now and then that tried just a touch too hard to sound like Teen Speak; and the other part is the repetitive rhythm that sapped the pacing’s speed toward the middle where the plot loses a tad bit of steam and waffles for a while before it rights itself and sticks the landing.

And the ending? Let’s talk about the ending. I like it. It’s jarring and sorta non-traditional while also being just familiar enough not to stray too far from its trope. It’s satisfying, and that’s not something you can say often.

Thanks to HMH Teen for sending me an ARC for an honest review.

DNF @ 45%. I really, really loved the premise of this book - Jane Austen retellings are my JAM, Edie was an adorable character, and the voice in which it was written was a bit geeky in a way that is incredibly appealing to me. I was hooked, too - I wanted to know which of the two boys in her life Edie would end up with. (I've never read "Mansfield Park," so I had no idea, although I had a definite idea of who I was rooting for.) So, by all means, I should have adored this book, and I definitely would have, had it not been for the fact that its content was a bit more...salty than I expected.

Read: approximately every other line of this novel involves a character thinking, partaking in (off-page, but alluded to over and over and OVER), or talking about sex.

It seemed to be the only thing on every character's mind, to the point that it was uncomfortable to read. Suffice to say it that when a character starts having recurring sexual dreams about her crush on-page, I'm out. That happened to Edie about three times in the first half, and I was wildly uncomfortable with all of them.

I ran into this debacle because, for some reason (and this is entirely my fault for a misplaced assumption), I thought that this being a retelling of a classic would make it a bit freer of the adult content that I'm not super comfortable reading. Most retellings that I've read have a lot less adult content than regular teen rom-coms, so I falsely assumed that this would be the same way. Not so. The failure to anticipate that this book might be a bit on the "no thanks" side for me was not in any way the author's fault; Firkins has a fantastic writing style and "Hearts, Strings, and Other Breakable Things" had a great premise. Nope. I should have been a little more careful in analyzing this before I requested it to make sure it was something I felt okay with reading to completion. It's hard to write such a negative review of this book because I actually loved it - the plot, the characters, the setting, the literary references - but for the aforementioned reasons, it ultimately wasn't for me.

But with said dream scenes, everyone cheating on everyone else, constant hook-ups, and some other considerations (boatloads of underage drinking)...not my cup of tea.

Edie Price has been rescued from foster care by her wealthy aunt and uncle who care more about looking like do-gooders than they do about her. She moves in with them for the end of her senior year, right next door to her childhood best friend and first crush, Sebastian. Unfortunately, he's got a girlfriend. Despite the fact that Edie can't stop thinking about him, she's absolutely not going to come between him and Claire. She distracts herself with Claire's brother, Henry, who leaves a trail of broken hearts in his wake (including the hearts of Edie's 2 cousins, Maria and Julia) and is way too charming to be taken seriously...and yet despite herself, Edie finds herself falling for him. Can she move on for real to a guy she's not sure she can trust, or will her heart keep her tied to a guy she's not sure she can have?

Full disclosure: I have never read Mansfield Park. This is a modern retelling, which meant nothing to me aside from the fact that I knew MP was widely considered to be Jane Austen's least popular book. And after reading this version, I can totally see why. Edie is a very wishy-washy character. She's kind of blah and doesn't really change through the course of the book. You want her to have learned lessons and grown up a little, and she mostly doesn't. To this author's credit, though, she DOES try to have Edie mature in the way she handles friendships and her plans for college...she worked with what she had, while still trying to stay true to Austen's original plot.

Sebastian is also kind of meh. He's mostly spineless, letting his family and his girlfriend make decisions for him. Edie's memories of him as a child with a great imagination are far more interesting than present-day Sebastian. He wears lots of wrinkled linen and secretly wants more from his life than the future as an attorney that's been mapped out for him, but he's just kind of sitting there, waiting for it all to change. LAME. But again, I will say that Firkins tried to give him a little bit of a personality when she could. She tried, but I still found Sebastian to be seriously lacking.

Now Henry. OHHHH HENRY. Henry is who this book is about. He's charming, he's swoony, and he's got a wicked sense of humor. He's definitely flawed, used to charming people into doing his bidding and using his wealth to get what he wants. But man, he is HOT. The countdown of 10 seconds as he and Edie are leaning against the house? HOLY CRAP. Nothing actually happens, but WOW so very hot. I don't think I'd be wrong in thinking that this author also prefers Henry to Sebastian (and maybe Jane Austen did, too), as he is so much more interesting and fully-formed as a character. Team Henry all the way.

BOO to Jane Austen for doing with this story and these characters what she did, because it absolutely did not go the way I wanted it to. HOWEVER. I can't blame Jacqueline Firkins for Austen's bad plot choices. So, I will say that despite knowing nothing about this story going in and kind of being pissed off throughout because I knew it wasn't going to end the way I would have chosen, I still super enjoyed it. The banter was great (I especially loved the exchange of "man walks into a bar" jokes), and even the obnoxious characters were well-written. I didn't think I was going to get sucked into this book because so many of the characters are unlikeable (damn it, Jane), but it's a testament to this author that I absolutely did.

So, to sum up: well done, Jacqueline Firkins! I'll definitely check out future books by this author.

PS...Henry was robbed.

***Thanks to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Book Group for the great ARC in exchange for my honest review!***

Have sent message to publisher that I am only able to read mobi files. I have tried a download only file reader and it just doesnt work correctly.

I am a bit upset that books like this are fed back as "non reviews" and that then in turn it affects my review ratio badly. I am never going to get a review ratio improvement at all unless somewhere within the details we are told that the galley is a download only or non-mobi prior to the requesting process.

Sorry I am unable to read this book.