Review: Sara Barnard – Fierce Fragile Hearts

Fierce Fragile Hearts
Sara Barnard

Suzanne has spiraled down to being depressed and suicidal, and checking out on life into a mental institution but is now back and willing to try again. Again. In her bed-sit, she needs to work out what she can and can’t cope with – and decide whether to let people get close enough to hurt her or love her.

Suzanne is a tormented character with multiple facets that I loved. The magic here was that I could see things from her perspective and her flawed logic, even as I hated the way that she treated people. Strangely enough, I had just read Supernormal (this non-fiction looks at the affects of abuse and its creation of resilient people), and I recognized a lot of the theory of those findings here. I was particularly satisfied by the ending, as Suzanne makes some really powerful choices.

This should have a trigger warning attached. The scenes in which Suzanne is depressed and self-destructive are very confronting and elicited many strong memories for me. I almost cried multiple times. Then, I couldn’t hold it in anymore when I got to an important character dying, and I cried! I’m not sure if it was a sad or happy cry either.

What I do know is that this novel is amazing, and I’m going to want to read it again, and it’s companion book Beautiful Broken Things again. Sara Barnard is also the author of A Quiet Kind of Thunder and Goodbye, Perfect. The best part about this author is that she is still relatively new on the scene, and I know that I can expect further wonderful things from her. 5 stars for this novel.