I have to be honest here, I did not finish this book. For me, it was boring and hard to follow. I hate giving these harsh reviews because I know the time and work that goes into writing novels but I just couldn’t get down with this one.

Shark Heart was a super unique, interesting book to read. I loved the short chapters and the way the book was divided into parts that each gave further insight into the characters. It was really beautiful and moving (and I absolutely love the cover). The one part that I wasn’t a fan of was the epilogue, which contained one of my least-favorite epilogue tropes, so I was never going to be a fan of it. Epilogue aside, I really enjoyed the book! The writing was phenomenal and the characters felt like real people. It’s certainly a book I will be thinking about for a long time because the story was that moving.

Wow. This started pretty slowly for me, and it took a little while for me to grow into it. And when I did, I loved it. Smart, poignant, different, this tale covers three generations of a family's life and love. I am impressed with this being the author's first novel - she has a new fan. I had tears running down my face for the last 10 pages.

I received a complimentary copy of the book from the publisher and Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm not sure any review I write can do justice to Emily Habeck's Shark Heart; I will be thinking about this book for quite a while.

The premise is simple enough: Lewis and Wren are newlyweds who receive the devastating news early on in their marriage that Lewis is in the early stages of mutating into a Great White Shark. Within the year, he will need to be released into the wild. From this jumping off point unfolds a profoundly moving story about marriage, motherhood, grief, and holding onto hope even in the most dire circumstances.

This was roughly the sum of the information I had going into my read, and I hesitate to give away any more than this. What works especially well here is how often and abruptly we shift storytelling styles and formats. The characters are living in an uncertain and somewhat unstable world, and so therefore is the reader. Yet even as we are asked to suspend all disbelief and accept the rules of the world Emily has thrown us into, we are offered generously intimate insights into the minds of the characters. And no matter how far-fetched their struggles may be, there is something profoundly relatable about the feelings they're struggling with.

I cannot recommend this one more highly. I wish I could read it again for the first time. Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon Element, S&S/ Marysue Rucci Books for the eARC.

I loved this book. The realness of grappling with loss you can see coming but can’t control made my heart ache. I wanted so much more for Lewis and Wren.

This reminded me - in a less horror way - of Our Wives Under the Sea which I also adored. The idea of loving someone who is going through irreversible and consequential changes they can’t control while seeing it through the eyes of someone who just loves them.

Fantastic

Four plus.
Is it a love story? An adult fairytale? Unlike anything else you've read? Yes.

Despite being a short book, I took my time and savored it. Part prose, almost poetry. Must be willing to suspend disbelief and enjoy the beauty.

This is definitely the most beautifully-written book about a man involuntarily transforming into a shark that I have ever read.

But seriously, there was so much to love about this book. I've always been interested in stories of metamorphosis, body horror, and what it means to be human, and this is the best one I've read in a while. A unique premise, lovely prose, and I think the cover design is great as well. It's hard to believe this is the author's debut. I hope to read more from her in the future. I'll be thinking about this one for a while.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon Element for the advance reader copy!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Stunning. Gorgeously written. Deeply affecting. Refreshingly unique. Debut novelist @emily.habeck has written a book that carries in its swift-moving current an abundance of lyrical prose. There are also beautiful passages reminiscent of: love letters, odes to nature-as-miracle-and-mirror, & fables. There is actual poetry and - yes - even a theater script in the making. This is an approach that enhances a beautiful story about several complex characters who become swept up in lives marked by profoundly disruptive changes in circumstances, & by literal metamorphosis. But it’s the resulting gradual transformations of their interior lives that captivate, & often resonate, at the deepest level.

The premise is purposely fantastical. Young newlyweds - Wren & her theater-teacher husband Lewis - grapple with Lewis’s diagnosis of a rare genetic condition that transforms him into a shark over the course of 9 months, & after that an abrupt release into the ocean is required; an openness to #magicalrealism is a must. But this intergenerational story isn’t about a man-turned-shark (as fascinating & visceral as this is, thanks to #emilyhabeck 's descriptive writing)...

Shark Heart is about the human condition.

This novel is about what happens when we’re presented with love - romantic; married; the love between mothers & daughters; the love of friendship & found family; false love that presents as abuse. This story is also about the overwhelming grief that can accompany the loss of love. Do we let our past experiences dictate our lives? Do we arrange our lives to completely eliminate the possibility of emotional pain, to limit risk?... Risky! Do we give up? Do we survive?...

And is surviving enough?

New, fresh wisdom is found throughout. Many pages contain only a few lines - this along with interspersed hints about Wren’s troubled past, & the weaving together of narrative forms, held my interest & kept things moving at a good clip. #sharkheart is by turns whimsical & gut wrenching. And it is consistently breathtaking.

Thanks to NetGalley, Simon Element, Simon & Schuster/Marysue Ricci Books for this #arc .

Will repost.
Pub date 8/8/23.

#debutnovel

What a wonderful read!! I was hesitant about requesting. It is a different type of book and honestly, I haven't been happy with the quirky type of books read. This was different. It was emotional, it was trying, it was satisfying. The writing style was just wonderful and I inhaled this book in a couple of sittings. Even now, as I write this, I can't get this book out of my head. This book is definitely going on my top books for 2023. Congratulations to this author, I look forward to future books.

#sharkheart #NETGALLEY #emilyhabeck.

This book is gorgeous: strange and whimsical and particular and odd and universal and winsome. If I could give it more than five stars I would. I love it and have put Emily Habeck on my list of authors that I'll read everything they write without hesitation. Please do yourself a favor and set aside some time for this book.

4.5 Stars

A story that has a lot of heart, and covers the unique transformations that occur in life, throughout life as we grow and change. Marriage, motherhood, the things in life that become a part of our identity. This is a story of love, and loss, desire for a different life, and how both love and loss leave indelible prints on our lives, leaving us forever changed. However, there is a twist to how this story evolves that I was not expecting.

This begins with the story of Lewis and Wren, who haven’t been married for less than a month when Lewis is diagnosed with a rare condition - Carcharodon carcharias. A condition where his body will evolve, over time, into another kind of creature, while retaining the majority of awareness, and memories will remain as he transitions, along with perception, and physical senses. He will, over time, physically transform into a Great White Shark. Which, obviously, will change their life. It won’t happen overnight, but by the end of a year his metamorphosis will be, more or less, complete. Needless to say, this will put a damper on their plans for the future, and leaves them both wrestling with how to navigate their future, as well as grieve over this loss.

As Wren’s attempts to find a way they can remain together, the memories of her childhood, and the years before she met Lewis are also shared. There are dark moments of her childhood, her parents’ contemptuous, abusive marriage. As time passes, and Lewis’ condition worsens, decisions must be made, but she struggles with the choices left to her.

This is a love story with a very different edge, a story of making impossible decisions, of family, of love and loss, and reminders of what was, and what will be. This is about grief, but this is also about so much more. It is a story of how fragile life can be, and of holding onto moments of wonder and memories, but there are also plenty of humorous moments.

A lovely, quirky, delightful debut.


Pub Date: 08 Aug 2023

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Simon Element, S&S / Marysue Rucci Books

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. What a strange but beautiful tale! I really enjoyed spending time with Wren and Lewis, despite the bizarre premise.

A charming idea of a novel that doesn't quite deliver on its premise. Wren, a perfectionistic financial manager, and Lewis, an idealistic failed actor and high school theatre teacher are two happily married newlyweds. Their newly married bliss tarnishes when they discover that Lewis has a rare genetic disease that will cause him to shortly turn into a great white shark. Part One covers their complicated grief as they deal with his decline. Part Two flashes back to Wren's mother, who we find suffers from a similar complication (although a different animal), and Part Three moves forward to Lewis' life in the sea after the completion of his change. Habeck moves back and forth between traditional prose, poetry, and theatre script - sometimes effectively and sometimes jarringly. The length of the chapters likewise varies wildly. As indicated in its title, this novel has a lot of heart, looking unflinchingly at the complications of marriage, family, disease, and disappointment. A little less experimentation (and a little more editing) might have brought that heart fully to the front. Without so much mutation.

This book was way different from what I normally read. Mostly I wanted to read it because a good friend of mine would love the book. The fact that it involved sharks was the first reason she would like it, but then I saw that the author grew up near where she lives. The story even mostly takes place near her area. And it was a story about people and relationships. All things that are tailor-made for her. For me, well, I normally read old science fiction books. So I stepped outside of my comfort zone to read Shark Heart, thinking I would probably just tolerate it. Wrong. While it isn’t my favorite book ever I did enjoy it. The book rose above my expectations. Especially the “Love Story” part. This isn’t Harlequin Romance. This is more literary than that. The story really has more relation to Kafka than to romance novels. It goes a step further than Kafka in making the change gradual and mixing it into the stories of the relationships. I believe the fantastical change was really just a metaphor for the fact that people do change over the years. I don’t want to spoil this novel by saying more than that. I just want to say that this book is worth giving a chance, even if it is very different from what you normally read. It is a very good novel.

Review: Shark Heart
Rating: 4/5 ⭐️
🦈
This novel was much more than I predicted. A beautiful story of love written with lyrical detail. We follow the lives of a newlywed couple, Wren and Lewis. The man is diagnosed with a rare disease that transforms him into a great white shark. As Lewis changes, we are thrown into the past and present. Between the two characters, their lives unravel. This is not only a story about the love between Wren and Lewis, but about love as a whole. The parts that showcase Wren’s mother gave birth to the story and highlight the characters with depth and beauty. Angela’s story was my favorite part of this book. I felt completely immersed in the world and setting. The book takes place where I live and gives great references to the places and people I see every day, which made reading even more enjoyable. All in all, this was a beautiful debut novel. Very unique and unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Being a shark aficionado, I’m happy to have read this and will add it to my collection once it's published. It’s definitely a book that will gain more depth with each reading. Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher, for this advanced reader copy for my review.

This is such a beautiful book. I cannot believe this is the author’s debut novel.

Shark Heart takes place in the present day, but with one twist. There are rare “animal dementias” that occur in which people transform into various animals and begin to forget their human side. This is an intergenerational love story that starts with Wren, whose husband begins transforming into a great white shark a few weeks after their marriage. We watch them both struggle with what this means for their marriage and the rest of their lives. The book also goes back to Wren’s mother’s love story beginning with when she gets pregnant with Wren at the age of 15 while in an abusive relationship.

I loved the writing style of this author. It was poetic, heartfelt, and sometimes humorous. I appreciated her efforts in pulling in theater script formatting to help capture some of the emotions and Lewis’s love for theater. The speculative fiction piece did not seem too far out of the realm of possibility, especially with the detail the author put into the treatments and how the diagnosis was dealt with. I loved how the book focused on coping with grief, the burdens of caretaking, appreciating life’s beauty and the small things, learning from others, finding a meaningful life. I loved the book had a realistic ending rather than a happy ending, and there was little pieces of Joy in it to appreciate.

My one complaint is that there wasn’t a little more of Wren and Lewis’s story. I understand it was ending as soon as it started, but Angela’s story, especially with elements glimpsed from Wren’s just felt so much more complete.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon Element for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I am not a person who often choose romance as a genre to read but the cover and plotline hooked me instantly, pun intended. While at first glance this might seem like a classic boy meets girl, they fall in love and get married sort of tale it then take a fantastic and almost insane turn as the boy, Lewis, suddenly finds out he is mutating into a great white shark. While at first this might seem ludicrous, such is the astonishing skill and poetic prose of that very talented author that we find ourselves both accepting and grieving with our heroine, the composed and systematic Wren, whose live has been thrown into turmoil but nevertheless attempts to maintain her loving and close relationship, that in this world so like our own there is something much stranger and as devastating as Alzheimer's or cancer: The sudden onset of an animalistic mutation where a loved one loses memories and humanity and becomes dangerous or deadly by no fault of their own changing into a shark, a bird, a komodo dragon, etc. Even unborn infants are not immune to this health crisis. And while it is indeed fantastical it is so well portrayed that you are taken through the process from diagnosis to final mutation step by step and left with the family that remains to pick up the pieces of shattered lives. This book is profound, devastating and yet singularly beautiful and hopeful. It tests the boundaries of love between man and wife, mother and child with absolutely nothing shy of the full scope of what it means to be Human even when you're becoming something else. Loved it

Oh, my! What a beautiful story!
Thank you, NetGalley, for the opportunity to read this book. The story has a strange premise , but if you can accept that and go with it, you will be greatly rewarded!
The story is actually two stories, about people that are diagnosed with a condition which causes their body to transform into that of an animal . The book is heartbreaking and yet also heartwarming. The characters are well written and the main characters are kind, good people who are very likeable. Good people who are going through such difficult experiences. I’m not one of those reviewers who writes multiple paragraphs, giving away the whole story. Let me suffice to say that this a beautiful story that I greatly enjoyed and that if the synopsis appeals to you, please do yourself a favor and give this book a try. You won’t be sorry! I loved it so much that I read the book in one sitting! Happy reading!

Thanks so much to NetGalley and Simon Element for this advance readers copy, in exchange for an honest review. Shark Heart is the story of Lewis and Wren, a young couple who shortly after getting married, learn that Lewis has been diagnosed with a rare medical condition that will ultimately result in him metamorphosing into a great white shark. The story follows the couple as they deal with this transformation and we also learn about the events that shaped Wren, including her experiences growing up and past friendships/romantic relationships.

This story was absolutely fantastic and I devoured it in just two sittings. I think part of the magic of this story is that the author makes it easy to believe that something as unrealistic as animal transformations could actually be real and that it could be as devastating a diagnosis as it feels for these characters. In my opinion, this author is so successful in suspending the reader’s disbelief because she so eloquently describes emotions and elements of the human experience. Overall, this story was truly an exploration of unrealistic circumstances, infused with beautiful character development and clever writing.

Something else that I thought was truly special about this story was how it managed to create some distance between tough topics, like actual human illnesses and loss, and the reader’s experience, since this story was about a made up illness. In this way, I think it actually made it easier to digest this story and consider how its lessons could be applied to whatever circumstance you might personally be facing. In my opinion, this is what good storytelling is all about and books like this are why I love to read. I definitely think this book found me at the right time and was a comfort to read.

Thus, I would definitely recommend this book!! Literary fiction fans will not be disappointed.

I was drawn to Shark Heart because the premise reminded me so strongly of Julia Armfield's Our Wives Under the Sea, one of my top five books of 2022. Despite their eerily similar plot points (truly, "one spouse undergoes an unwanted but unstoppable transformation into a sea creature" is 100% applicable to both!), my experience of reading them felt different.

While I liked Shark Heart, I wasn't wowed by it - maybe because I'd already read and loved something so similar? I've seen a lot of other reviewers use words like "unique", and I'm sure I'd have described it that way too if I hadn't read OWUTS first. Regardless, it is certainly creative!

So I'll set aside that comparison, since OWUTS is such a hard act to follow (though I do think it's reasonable to expect that readers familiar with OWUTS will have it in mind when they encounter this book too).

Focusing only on Shark Heart, I really enjoyed the matter-of-fact way the author presented such a surreal situation - the contrast between the day-to-day logistics (scheduling Lewis's medical appointments, chatting over dinner about work, etc.) and the dawning realization that he's inexplicably yet inexorably mutating into a shark. His and Wren's short marriage is a beautiful depiction of love in the face of doom (which, if you want to get existential about it, is broadly applicable!). And, of course, the cover is spectacular.

That said, I didn't love the writing style - it wasn't at all clunky, but I wouldn't describe it as lyrical the way others have - and I found it challenging to (a) get to know and (b) care about some of the side characters, particularly Tiny Pregnant Woman. (I have thoughts about what she represented to Wren, but I'm not confident in them.)

For me, this was a 3.5 star read, but I've rounded up to 4. Thanks to Simon Element (S&S) and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.