In ‘Heartbroke’, a collection of mesmerizing short stories, Chelsea Bieker offers readers an emotional odyssey that lingers long after the final page. With piercing vulnerability, Bieker delves deep into the complexities of the human heart, discovering love, longing, and the disfigurement of fractured connections.

Each story in this collection is a window into a distinct world, populated by characters who are achingly human. Bieker's gift for crafting three-dimensional, flawed individuals brings their struggles and triumphs to life with remarkable clarity. From the dizzying highs of infatuation to the abyss of heartbreak, her exploration of relationships resonates with raw authenticity.

Bieker's command of language transports readers to landscapes both physical and emotional, immersing them in her characters' lives. She captures the nuances of joy, despair, and everything in between.

Bieker's ability to craft a compelling narrative is particularly evident in her masterful pacing. Each story unfolds with a careful balance of tension and release, keeping readers captivated from beginning to end. The author effortlessly weaves together moments of tenderness and heart-wrenching revelations, drawing readers ever deeper into the labyrinth of emotions her characters navigate.

She fearlessly confronts the messiness of love and the scars it leaves behind. The stories contained within this collection are examinations of the human condition. Bieker holds a mirror up to our own experiences, urging us to confront our vulnerabilities and find solace in the shared struggle.

Bieker's keen eye for detail and her ability to distill profound moments into concise prose make ‘Heartbroke’ a standout addition to the genre. It is a testament to the power of storytelling and the ability of literature to illuminate the hidden corners of the human heart.

A huge thank you to Catapult Counterpoint Press, Soft Skull Press and NetGalley for the advanced reader’s copy of ‘Heartbroke’.

Heartbroke from Chelsea Bieker was a good read! It was overall a sweet book. Thanks to netgalley for letting me review this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

I didn't love this as much as GODSHOT which is one of my all time favorites.

It was a cool idea though! I'm excited to see what else Chelsea comes out with in the future.

I gobbled this book up SO. FAST.

I knew GODSHOT had been a hit (and I will go back to read ASAP) and I can see that Bieker deserves all the hype with the quirky writing. I loved that a few of the stories connected, and there's a good balance of humor, personality, and heaviness.

Thanks so much for the review copy!

This book is a tough read. It cover so many incredibly sad and hard situations. Each chapter is it's own short story. I made the mistake of attempting to read this from cover to cover but it's so heavy it really requires a break between stories. It's dark, and sad, and hard, but so beautifully written. Just know your own limitations before picking it up.

Life under the California son is stereotypically shown to be bright and perfect but the stories in this collection show another side to that world. In each story characters are clinging to hope and to peace as they try to carve it out in their corner of the world. The issues here are dark and difficult but the characters are what shine as the reader cheers them on and hopes for them and their journey!

Chelsea Bieker does it again. This collection of short stories carries so much weight. Every possible dysfunctional family situation is represented—definitely check the trigger warning before diving into this one.

These stories are about women and the choices they have to make either by the situation they were born into or got themselves into. Women fighting to survive their circumstances. What I really loved about these stories is that they all had the same feel, dusty California underbelly. I also loved seeing some characters and places from Godshot creep into Heartbroke. You really feel like an entire community was built out between the two books and you’re experiencing the lives of strangers in this area.

For a short story collection that explores such dark and painful topics, this book carries a wistful tone that felt so nostalgic and lovely! Heartbroke explores the lives of rural people enraptured in the atmosphere of the southern gothic. I found myself loving every character, no matter how awful they were - it seemed that their choices always traced back to the land, their heritage, and rural sensibilities. I loved seeing reoccurring characters pop up throughout the stories and how they tie together in melancholy moments. This is a perfect collection for hot and dry days spent missing home, and it's one that I'll return to in the future.

I knew when I read Godshot that it heralded the arrival of a writer with a unique perspective and an unflinching, intense voice for telling important, uncomfortable stories. With Heartbroke, Chelsea Bieker proves that she is an immense talent and cemented herself in my mind as one of the most provocative female writers in contemporary fiction. This is a stellar collection of stories.

I'm a fan of short stories, but even still, I always come across a few duds when I read a collection of them. That wasn't the case here. Every single story in Heartbroke affected me in some way. These stories are gritty and luminous, melancholy and devastating, disturbing and compassionate. I think the reason some authors find short stories so difficult to write -- and why some readers don't always connect with them as much as with a novel -- is because it's not an easy thing to create fully-fleshed characters with such a brief word count. But Bieker's characters are so well portrayed, so astonishingly authentic, and each one of them got under my skin. Although these characters inhabit a world very separate from most people, there is also a universality to them that reflects the best and worst in all of us.

My favorites in the collection were "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Miners," "Say Where She Is," "Fact of a Body," and "Keep Her Down." I was consciously aware of a deliberate, intentional ebb and flow to the organization of the stories that I think made me appreciate them on an entirely new level. And Bieker's writing is incandescent and startling, striking the perfect balance between pragmatism and compassion as she relays stories of intense suffering and glorious redemption. Bieker doesn't shy away from the most difficult and taboo topics, so readers should be aware of that going in, but I honestly can't recommend Heartbroke highly enough. I'm going to be thinking about these stories and these characters for a long time.

I loved Godshot so my expectations were high for Heartbroke and… they were not met. The writing felt clunky and generally like it was trying desperately to be profound. I feel compelled to note that just giving characters odd names does not in fact make them interesting, and that seemed to be a recurring theme in all of the short stories in this collection.

i was so excited to read this book, even though i still haven’t read chelsea bieker’s novel ‘godshot’, but if anything, reading the stories in ‘heartbroke’ made me even more excited to finally pickup her debut.

the stories in ‘heartbroke’ are united primarily through the setting: all of them take place in sparse, rural towns in california’s central valley. this, paired with the motivations of the various characters we meet, lead to some snapshots at the type of life i have only read about but know is reality for many.

i read this book over the course of a month, and i honestly think it was the best way to do it, as i really got to appreciate each story as its own entity, while still seeing how each one connects to the others in very subtle ways. the characters in each story are all yearning for something greater, often searching for a way to get out of their current situation. the stories flow from one to the other, and create a bigger picture of rural california living.

if you’re a fan of beautiful writing, desert settings, and often reckless decisions, this story collection is for you.

I really liked the short stories within this book! This book threw me off at first, because I was expecting a novel, however, each individual short story was like a novel within itself. If you want to feel sad or have an emotional read, this is the book for you! Each story is a story of sabotage or toxic love or family drama or heartbreak. The good thing.... each story is quick and the emotions won't last. Until you read the next one!

Chelsea’s writing is objectively beautiful, but like with Godshot, there is something about it that just doesn’t click exactly right with me.

I had wanted to read Godshot for awhile but haven’t quite been able to get my hands on it yet, so when the chance came to read Heartbroke, I was very eager. First things first, a lot of content warnings for this book: physical abuse, sexual + domestic violence, gun violence

“The touch of a person. Did it ever leave you? It didn’t seem plausible that as humans geared toward survival, as every animal was, that we could be broken by the movements of others over us. It didn’t seem practical.”

Heartbroke is a series of short stories following individuals (mostly women) in the Central Valley of California, all of whom are searching for love in dire circumstances. The landscape is one of rural poverty and desolation and Bieker’s characters have crafted lives that are built for survival from the most bleak circumstances, yet they often imagine alternate trajectories where love and safety are possible.

The women and children we meet are often in the hands of violent men, but the relationships are, to them, complex, with the men carrying tragedies of their own and are also sources of security and care for many. Still, the characters are given the chance to change their circumstances, but with often morally trying choices. A daughter betrays her mother who has led them into a cult. A young girl entertains setting her best friend up with an internet stranger to give her an escape from the town.

If I were to read it again, I probably wouldn’t have done so in such a straight cover to cover manner. The stories are heavy, and the violence feels repetitive but the repetition plays to the point of common experience. The stories are reminiscent of Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (though Carver’s is a more understated regional sadness) and Lucia Berlin’s stories. While all of the stories were fairly distinct from each other, they each pack punches of huge weight, and I may have preferred tragedies that varied more so in their volume.

Nevertheless, I found Bieker’s writing to be captivating, and she has a talent for creating heart wrenching empathy for her characters. I’ll still keep Godshot on my TBR after this.

Y’all, Chelsea Bieker is seriously one of the best authors out there right now. I’m OBSESSED with her writing.

This is a fantastic short story collection and each character gets underneath your skin in the best way possible. Like, where is the Change.org petition to turn each of these short stories into a full-blown novel? I’m ready to sign.

Bieker has this way of revealing so many things about a character without telling you a thing. You gradually learn who these people are through the most deliciously specific details, which I live for. I just want to ask Bieker, did you grow up in rural West Tennessee with me?? Because this is some modern southern gothic sounding lit right here. And I swear some of her characters exist in actual real life in my county.

AND for those that loved her previous book, Godshot, you’re going to get some cameos and lovely Easter eggs!

I cannot recommend Bieker’s writing enough. If you like wonderfully weird characters and contemporary fiction with gorgeous covers, then you’ve come to the right place.

Chelsea Bieker wrote one of my favorite books of the last five years so I was incredibly excited for her first collection of stories. It did not disappoint! Although I don't usually gravitate to short story collections as a rule, I am reading more and more collections that are so beautiful, including this one. There were the same themes of the hard-scrabble, dying American West and, particularly, growing up and living in California's Central Valley . . . and all of those stories felt connected, often involving characters referenced in other stories. My favorite stories from this collection were Heartbroke, Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Miners, Raisin Man, and Cadillac Flats but the entire collection is worth buying and reading.

Heartbroke comes out next week on April 5, 2022, and you can purchase HERE! I also loved this author's debut novel and reviewed it HERE.

You were looking at that boy. I knew for certain then what I'd always wondered. I knew then it was true.

I cried in the car watching you because I realized my heart wanted something unthinkable, a world where you could just be yourself, and I wasn't sure where that idea was coming from as I had never known such a world. My heart just wanted this for you.

This has to be one of my favorite collections of short stories: impeccable writing, a memorable cast of characters, and unique storylines.

With unique prose, Bieker delivers a heartbreaking yet warm masterpiece that I quickly gobbled up. I don’t think there was one story I disliked.

Taking place in sunny California, we follow an array of different characters from
all walks of life. From teenagers to drug addicts and kidnappers, these varying plots felt raw and conjured up many emotions. In the end, I realized that I consistently found myself rooting for each story to have a happy ending, even though the characters seemed content either way.

This is a wonderful, often dark, collection of 11 stories, all set in Calfornia's central valley. They are narrated primarily by women and if there's an underlying theme, it's the relationship between mother and child (although it's not always obvious). These are people with issues to put it mildly but Bieker has written them with compassion and empathy. No one, not the phone sex operator or the bartender or anyone else is a caricature and you'll be able to visualize their world. As always with short story collections, recommend that you read these one at a time over a period of days to fully appreciate each one. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Terrific.

Chelsea Bieker brings us a collection of short stories about desire causing havoc within someone's life. After getting a tiny glimpse into these characters' lives, you are left with such an uneasy feeling that sticks throughout the book and after reading. From a phone sex operator's obsession with a cowboy to a woman stealing a baby to make herself feel whole again, these stories look at obsession and desire in a new light.

With every short story collection you are left with the feeling of it feeling unfinished, and these are no exception.
While I thought each story was well written, I found them dragging on unnecessarily in certain parts. I found myself getting bored some of the time, but still enjoyed the stories overall.

I think this was a solid short story collection that is worth the read if you are okay with uneasy topics.

I read about 150 books per year and I never re-read. I can't remember the last book I read more than once. I read a handful of five star books each year.

Heartbroke: 5 stars!

I have to reread the short stories that make up Heartbroke. They are just that good and I know there are threads weaving them together, although they stand alone, in my first read. The characters in Heartbroke are trying to make it work in difficult circumstances -- and Bieker's masterful natural prose takes you there. They are flawed humans and I wanted more of these characters. Lucky for me, some of them make appearances in other of the short stories. Among those are:

1. an addict who steals a baby;
2. a phone sex operator who sees opportunity in a cowboy;
3. a mother and son barely living on a beach in a tourist town (this one really made my heart ache);
4. a teenage girl playing a dangerous game online.

Looking back at this collection there was something in each one that made my heart ache. Yes, I was invested. If you are looking for happily ever after, this is not that book! But it is an exquisite piece of work that I need to go back to.

I have Chelsea's debut Godshot on my shelf, but have not yet read it. Obviously, I will be reading, but after I revisit Heartbreak.