My Heart Skipped a Beat or Two

Reading Heartbeat was a painful, beautiful experience.  Once again, Elizabeth Scott has written a beautiful, poignant novel.  I was thankful to receive this egalley from netgalley.com and can't wait until it is published so that I can talk about it with people! 
Emma's mother is dead.  But her body is being kept alive until the child within her can be born.  Emma resents her stepfather for making the decision to keep her mother on life support until her brother can be born.  Once they were a close, loving family and she never doubted that Dan loved her as if she were his natural child.  Now Emma can't study, can't hardly function.  She meets Caleb Harrison, a bad dude with a reputation for all kinds of terrible things, but it turns out he is the one person who can help her get through the hurt, and maybe she can help him as well, for he is hurting, too.  Great characters.  Great story.  Heartbreaking and wonderful. 

Breaking Your Own Heart

I thought and thought about a song that was about breaking one's own heart.  I'm sure there are lots of them, but I couldn't come up with any at all.  It is such an interesting, yet sorrowful, concept.  Between Here and Forever is the latest from Elizabeth Scott, an author I am coming to love more with each book. 

Between is the story of Abby, a seventeen year old with a twenty year old sister, Tess.  Tess has been the perfect one, always.  The one every guy wanted to date and every girl wanted to be.  Now Tess is in a coma as a result of a car accident on icy roads.  Abby has always lived in her sister's shadow and thought her sister to be perfect.   Abby's self-esteem is pretty much nonexistent.  At first I didn't I thought it was so low, that it was unbelievably low, but then I remembered what it was like to be 17.  I don't remember it all too well, as it was a million years ago, but man...sometimes being 17 is hard.  And I appreciated the fact that Abby seemed like a real 17 year old, not one of the super sophisticated chicks in PLL or Private, etc.
As Abby visits Tess every day in the hospital, she learns more about Tess and herself.  She discovers that Tess had a lot more too her than she thought, for the good and for the not so good.  She also discovers that she has her own needs, maybe, and maybe, she might, maybe, maybe, seek to fill them.  Abby meets a guy name Eli who at first look, is just perfect.  She discovers more about him as well.

Back to the "breaking your own heart" thing.  This isn't talked about in the book, but I wonder,
does it happen all the time?  When we say someone broke my heart, are we really saying that we broke our own?  Or do people have the power to break our hearts.  I had always thought so, now I am not so sure.
Regardless...great book from Ms. Scott.  Recommended, for sure!

Controversy

Living Dead Girl is quite the controversial book if you take a look at the online reviews from amazon.com and goodreads.com. It is just so brutal. I had no idea what it was about when I got it. It was on some list some place, I guess, which is why I put it on hold, but when it came in, I had not recollection of what it was about, but I had nothing else to listen to and so I put it in the cd player in the car.

Living is a relentless, punishing, well written, first person account of a girl who was abducted at age 10 and forced to be the slave, sexual and otherwise, of a vicious man known as Ray.

I can't say I liked this book because there was no redemption to be found. It was like Boys Don't Cry or Monster. They were true stories. This could be a true story, I mean, things like this happen. We just don't want to think about them happening. I don't know...I don't think I could recommend this to anyone. I am not sure who would enjoy it. Or why it is important to read it. Like I can see why it is important to know the story of Brandon Teena, so that stuff like that doesn't happen to people like him, but like I am not sure why we need to know this story. It seems like it is kind of a sick voyeuristic kind of deal. As I get days away from it, I get even more creeped out by it. I don't know...I guess this is another one that I wish someone would read so that I could talk about it!