A Darkly Beating Heart Author: Lindsay Smith
Pages: 272 (Hardcover)
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Release Date: October 25, 2016
Source: For Review
Purchase: Amazon•TBD (affiliate link)
A time-travel story that alternates between modern day and 19th century Japan as one girl confronts the darkness lurking in her soul.
No one knows what to do with Reiko. She is full of hatred. All she can think about is how to best hurt herself and the people closest to her. After a failed suicide attempt, Reiko’s parents send her from their Seattle home to spend the summer with family in Japan to learn to control her emotions. But while visiting Kuramagi, a historic village preserved to reflect the nineteenth-century Edo period, Reiko finds herself slipping back in time into the life of Miyu, a young woman even more bent on revenge than Reiko herself. Reiko loves being Miyu, until she discovers the secret of Kuramagi village, and must face down Miyu’s demons as well as her own.
A Darkly Beating Heart was dark, disturbing, and unfortunately super awkward and unbelievable. Reiko is spending her Summer in Japan, and she’s hating it. But she hates everything and everyone anyway. She lets her anger fester and most of her thoughts are consumed with her need for revenge on all those who have wronged her. Including herself. Then she, her cousin, and her entourage head to a historical village and things get weird fast. Reiko is thrust hundreds of years into the past, living the life of a girl who just might be more hell bent on revenge than she is.
I absolutely love the premise of A Darkly Beating Heart! It’s just so different from anything I’ve read before. Reiko really is just obsessed with her dark thoughts. I love how she loved being in Miyu’s life and thinking that she’s helping her. The whole creepy village was pretty awesome. But I never believed Reiko as a character. No one sits around thinking about how they’re going to get their revenge. She is constantly thinking things like “I will have my revenge!” “They will all pay!” “I deserved revenge!” It’s all super, duper awkward. I could totally get behind Reiko having dark, violent thoughts, but the constant thinking about revenge was not believable at all. Not to mention that she never actually plots her revenge. She’s just going to have her revenge because of reasons.
There’s really not much for me to say about A Darkly Beating Heart. I loved it when Reiko wasn’t thinking about her revenge. I loved getting little pieces of what happened to send her to the hospital and eventually to Japan. I really loved the time travel, life-swap aspect as well. But nothing was really developed at all. The book is super short, so everything happens too fast and almost without reason (insta-love!!!). It was just very very awkward to read.
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