A review by shelfimprovement
Heart Like Mine by Amy Hatvany
2.0
If you hover over the second star in the ratings system, it says "it was ok." That pretty much sums up my feelings on this one. It was ok -- not bad -- but I didn't find myself truly enjoying it.
Grace is a thirtysomething nonprofit director who has chosen to focus on her career instead of pursuing marriage and motherhood. Things change when she meets a divorced restaurateur named Victor. She falls for him, but isn't quite sure how his two children, Max and Ava, will fit into her life plan. When the kids' mother, Kelli, dies suddenly and unexpectedly, Grace finds herself in a role she never envisioned for herself: full-time stepmother.
The book is told from a rotating POV, as Grace and Ava share narrative duties with an omniscient narrator giving insight into Kelli's troubled past. The writing was fine, but the characters never rose above a single dimension for me and I found Ava's voice to be pretty inauthentic. The marketing copy describes her as mature beyond her thirteen years, but I didn't get that from the book itself as her actions were often childish. I felt like Hatvany didn't get that a mature adolescent's voice is still not going to sound like an adult voice.
Still, it raised some interesting questions and ended up a little less schmaltzy than I feared after the first 100 pages.
Grace is a thirtysomething nonprofit director who has chosen to focus on her career instead of pursuing marriage and motherhood. Things change when she meets a divorced restaurateur named Victor. She falls for him, but isn't quite sure how his two children, Max and Ava, will fit into her life plan. When the kids' mother, Kelli, dies suddenly and unexpectedly, Grace finds herself in a role she never envisioned for herself: full-time stepmother.
The book is told from a rotating POV, as Grace and Ava share narrative duties with an omniscient narrator giving insight into Kelli's troubled past. The writing was fine, but the characters never rose above a single dimension for me and I found Ava's voice to be pretty inauthentic. The marketing copy describes her as mature beyond her thirteen years, but I didn't get that from the book itself as her actions were often childish. I felt like Hatvany didn't get that a mature adolescent's voice is still not going to sound like an adult voice.
Still, it raised some interesting questions and ended up a little less schmaltzy than I feared after the first 100 pages.