Hearts and Diners Blurb

Heather Sand has always given 100% at doing the right thing; from being the perfect big sister to the girlfriend who wears a loving heart on both sleeves. After the passing of her father, a measuring stick for perfect, she’s met with the not so unexpected—a cheating boyfriend.

Plucked from a wholesome little world into the abyss of a cold reality, Heather comes face to face with a man who wears confidence like cologne with tattoos to decorate his charisma. For the first time in her life she discovers in herself a deep shallowness laced with jealousy, lust, neediness and passion. With the closest one’s pleading that she has embraced a darkness that is her new found love, she learns that she must also be the angel on the shoulder to her mother, who only after six months of losing her husband has found “love” online.

Struggling with that revelation while dealing with her own rocky relationship, Heather decides to do some snooping and just as she feared: her mother’s new romantic interest is bad news. The dilemma– Will Heather fend off her unrelenting inner demons or will she embrace the insecure love that makes her happy?

I received a copy of Hearts and Diners to review as part of the Damp Pebbles Blog Tour.

My Thoughts

Hearts and Diners, by Joseph Reilly, is a complicated contemporary romance novel. There’s a lot going on throughout the story, and the characters are complex and frequently difficult to like. They make bad choices, sometimes knowingly, and hurt each other. It makes it an interesting read, although not an easy one.

There were a couple of characters who I enjoyed reading about. Main character Heather has a little sister, Leah, who I thought was fun. Sweet, but tough, and she had some amusing dialogue. Heather’s best friend Nicole was also fun, and I thought her relationship with her boyfriend (Jack) was a nice counterpoint to some of the other plot threads.

Heather makes for a challenging protagonist

I struggled with certain elements of the book. Heather was a difficult main character to empathise with, although the writing conveys her frustration in a really visceral way. Her tendency to antagonise the people around her remained a core character trait for the entirety of the story, and meant there were several sections where I felt like we got scene after scene of similar conflicts with little plot or character development.

The depth of her pain was really well communicated, so I don’t fault the author on that front. There was a very intense scene in which Heather struggled with overwhelming emotions and some dark thoughts. I just found her a challenging character generally, and understanding her internal struggle didn’t change that for me.

I’ve written more about my thoughts on unlikeable characters and tips on writing them in this post!

Heather’s relationship with Chris was the heart of the novel. While I think Reilly worked hard to communicate the complexities of the relationship, I ultimately couldn’t support it. The relationship was a deeply unhealthy one. While Chris was definitely an interesting character, I couldn’t get on board with him and Heather being together. Not when almost every conversation they had referenced her being afraid of him.

Nit-picking

I really don’t like to mention mistakes in books, because it feels nit-picky and not really relevant to the story. However, there were a lot of errors in this book, such as missing punctuation or incorrect versions of words used (where instead of wear, for example). This is obviously an editing issue, not a flaw of the story itself, but it was at a level where it interfered with my ability to enjoy the narrative.

The writing style was also a little overwrought, in places, for my taste. But I appreciate this is a preference thing, so I don’t want to harp on it.

Summary

With Hearts and Diners, Reilly has told a challenging story with deeply flawed characters. In other circumstances this would be right up my street but, in this instance, it unfortunately didn’t really connect with me.

There are some funny moments in the story, and some nice diversity of characters. I think there was the potential for a great exploration of the dynamics of abusive relationships in here, but I didn’t feel like it followed through with that. If you like romance that leans into dangerous relationships then Hearts and Diners may be worth a look! You can buy it on Amazon (UK/US).

If you want to follow the author, you can check out his Twitter, or his website.