A Heart So Fierce and Broken took my expectations, set them on fire, and then danced around them like a drunken lunatic under a full moon. It overturned all that is usually associated with the second novel in a YA trilogy, and instead fed its readers an emotional story about finding yourself and overcoming fear.
WHAT I LIKED:
🤭 It's Unconventional and Surprising! This was not the sequel I was expecting, and while it threw me for a loop at first, I ultimately came to appreciate the daring and stereotype-smashing choices that Kemmerer made here. A Curse So Dark and Lonely was not your average Beauty and the Beast retelling, and A Heart So Fierce and Broken continues to plow forward in that same unique storytelling vein. As somebody who highly values ingenuity in literature, I found the unexpected narrative direction to be one of the largest selling points of the novel, though I'm sure it will be just the opposite for some readers.
💭The Emotional Complexity! Poorly-written fictional characters can have, as Hermione Granger once put it, "the emotional range of a teaspoon." The opposite is true here; Grey, Rhen, Harper, and Lia Mara have such a vast emotional range, I sometimes struggled to understand them and their complex motivations. Kemmerer doesn't shy away from digging deep into the dark recesses of her characters' psyches, and what she unearths there is both humanizing and horrifying. More than anything, A Heart So Fierce and Broken is an exploration of how the events of the first book mentally affected the characters, and largely focuses on their respective emotional journeys. This brings a messy rawness to the story that I found beautifully refreshing and all too realistic.
🏃💨The Pacing! In the "Acknowledgements Section" of this book, the author admits that A Heart So Fierce and Broken is her eleventh published novel, and it shows. Kemmerer knows exactly where to place all the right story beats, and moves the plot forward in a flawlessly engaging way. The last third had me gripping the sides of my eReader so hard, I was in danger of snapping it clean in half. I JUST HAD TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED!
👥 The Supporting Cast! In video games, NPCs are bland, non-playable characters who just stand around twiddling their thumbs. They do nothing but act as plot devices. Sometimes, a book's minor characters can feel like NPCs; bland, flat, and included in the story merely as a way to check off all the necessary boxes. NOT IN THIS BOOK, FOLKS. I loved each character (both new and returning) with a heart so fierce it nearly broke me. They were well-fleshed out, lovable to a fault, and endearingly flawed in a way that made me just want to wrap them all up in a big, breath-stealing hug. (Yes, even Iisak with his flesh-ripping claws.)
WHAT I LIKED...LESS:
👑 The Character Arcs! In A Curse So Dark and Lonely, I met, fell in love with, and basically would sacrifice my left pinky toe for both Rhen and Harper (though why they would be in dire need of my left pinky toe is an utter mystery). In any case, they were undoubtably the heart and soul of the first Cursebreakers installment. But their character development in this book was...perplexing. To say the least. I'm interested to see where the series finale will take us, especially when it comes to Rhen, who continued to be as much a beast as he ever was.
🌎 The World-building! The author doesn't spend much time fleshing out the cultures or histories of Emberfall and Syhl Shallow. Nor does she present the reader with a uniquely structured magic system, choosing instead to stick to basic and superficial explanations. This book is not high fantasy, but it knows it and doesn't pretend to be.