Our Chemical Hearts

 

Author: Krystal Sutherland

Rating: 4.1/5

Recommend: An easy to read novel perfect for someone looking for a different, suspenseful take on a classic high-school love story. Our Chemical Hearts is a very strange book. The plot is well thought out and you’ll be hooked to the story till the very end.

While reading the initial few chapters of this book, my first thought was this: Grace and Henry strongly remind me of Clay and Hannah in Thirteen Reasons Why. But, how could that be possible? Hannah was dead and Grace is very much alive… unless Henry is somehow talking to a ghost. By the end of the book, believe me I was stunned at how accurate my premonition was. Grace was actually a ghost; one whose heart still beat, but a part of whom had died during the accident.

Our Chemical Hearts revolves around the story of Grace and Henry. Unlike other books, Henry did not fall for Grace at first sight. In her man clothes, dirty hair, and sallow skin, she looked more like someone of the street than potential love interest. But, then they are both selected as editors of the prestigious school newspaper. Henry looks up Grace’s Facebook profile out of curiosity and sees that the model-like girl in the photo is nowhere near the one he goes to school with – and presto! The mystery of Grace Town begins.

I admired and pitied Henry’s character in the book. Although he did better with words, he wasn’t afraid to express his feelings for Grace, despite knowing that she was broken. What I didn’t like about him though was that he let Grace lead him on. 

He almost messed up his whole life and future for a girl who did not like him back – not that in the way he wanted her too. Granted however, that he did have to find out about her problems one at a time – by the time he knew the whole story, he had already taken the plunge.

I hate Grace. Absolutely detest her. I don’t blame her for the accident, I really don’t, but in no way was it fair for her to use Henry to heal her broken self. As Henry said, Grace was a jagged piece of glass, that the more he loved, the more he would cut himself with. He also compared her to heroin (Edward Cullen’s personal brand of heroin like in Twilight) and himself to Meyer’s very own vampire. The twilight references fit… with the difference being that Grace was literally killing him, but Edward was already dead. 

Lola takes away the award for the being the hero in the story. She is the  superman who swoops in whenever her best friends make a gigantic, embarrassing mess (which is often). And lastly, there’s Dom: the dead boyfriend without whom this story would never even happen. Our Chemical Hearts has left me wanting to know more about Dom. I want there to  be a sequel, an entire book written by Grace on what their relationship was like when he was alive. Grace will eventually heal. She will never be the same, but she will get better. Maybe she becomes a writer after college, and finally gathers the strength to put her life’s story into words? Maybe there’s an afterword to that novel, about how she adopts a child named Dominic, and creates her very own library in his memory?

There’s tremendous possibility for this novel. Needless to say I loved it: it was refreshing to find a high school story that did not have the overdone boy meets girl drama.