Review: My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga

My Heart and Other Black Holes

by Jasmine Warga

Category: Young Adult

Genre: Contemporary

Publisher: HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray

Publication Date: February 10, 2015

Page Count: 302

Format: Hardcover

Source: Own

Goodreads Synopsis: 

Sixteen-year-old physics nerd Aysel is obsessed with plotting her own death. With a mother who can barely look at her without wincing, classmates who whisper behind her back, and a father whose violent crime rocked her small town, Aysel is ready to turn her potential energy into nothingness.

There’s only one problem: she’s not sure she has the courage to do it alone. But once she discovers a website with a section called Suicide Partners, Aysel’s convinced she’s found her solution: a teen boy with the username FrozenRobot (aka Roman) who’s haunted by a family tragedy is looking for a partner.

Even though Aysel and Roman have nothing in common, they slowly start to fill in each other’s broken lives. But as their suicide pact becomes more concrete, Aysel begins to question whether she really wants to go through with it. Ultimately, she must choose between wanting to die or trying to convince Roman to live so they can discover the potential of their energy together. Except that Roman may not be so easy to convince.

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Review: This was one of the books on my March TBR, and I knew that I really did want to read it during the month of March. The book looked gorgeous, for starters. The hardcover has an awesome feel to it, and when you take off the book jacket the book is still completely beautiful. I went into it hoping the inside would be just as beautiful as the outside, and I was not disappointed. Not only did I read this off of my TBR, but I buddy read it with a friend (and awesome author) E.V. Fairfall. We started it the same day, and talked back and forth via Twitter as we continued to read which just made reading the book that much more fun.

I really enjoyed the characters in this book. I love how Aysel and Roman wanted the same things in life, but viewed things in completely different ways. They both had reasons for wanting to take their own lives, and life had changed drastically for both of them after events occurred. Still, Roman was very good about looking great on the outside to his former friends, but he was incredibly depressed on the inside, and looked quite eager to take his own life. On the other hand, Aysel seemed noticeably upset and indifferent on the outside, and despite wanting to commit suicide, she seems to deal with things internally much better than other people in her situation. 

I do love how this was a book that was focused on suicide, but was not depressing or terribly upsetting the whole time. There was the right amount of emotion written into every scene, and I was quite surprised that I did not cry throughout this book. I think that was a nice thing, though. It's nice to be able to read something emotional without getting too upset to the point of tears. It had me right on the border, and I thought that was a wonderful place to be. Usually I ball like a baby, and I don't always appreciate that!

By far, my favorite thing about the book was the writing itself, though. I find it a bit shocking that this was Warga's debut novel because it read like she has been writing novels for a very long time. There was so much beautiful imagery and figurative language, and the book was incredibly quotable. I wrote a ton of them down, in fact, so that I would have them somewhere in the future when I wanted to think back on them. The writing made me not want to put the book down, and I think that is a wonderful sign of a great book. This was most definitely a five star book for me.

Rating: 5.0 / 5.0