Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott Deborah Stevenson Scott, Elizabeth. Heartbeat. Harlequin Teen, 2014. [240p]. ISBN 978-0-373-21096-1 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 8-10. “I am Emma, seventeen. I live with my stepfather. My mother is dead. Inside her is a baby.” Such is the purgatory of Emma’s existence as the former hypercompetitive student now sleepwalks through school and visits the ICU, where her brain-dead mother will remain on life support long enough to carry Emma’s unborn halfbrother to safe delivery size. Emma’s driving force is her hatred for her stepfather, Dan, who, she believes, made his decision about her mother’s fate solely to ensure the arrival of his child, and Emma’s previously close relationship with Dan only makes her feel more betrayed by their distance now. The one person who seems to understand Emma’s agony is Caleb, a classmate whose self-destructive and criminal behavior stems from his own family tragedy. Scott is a versatile and capable writer, and here she creates a romance where the relationship ties in directly with a more central family drama. Emma’s rage against her stepfather is believable in its shifts from cold and punitive to white-hot and screaming, but it’s also credible that this focused fury operates as her main emotional response to a horrible and deeply conflicted situation; the book is especially effective at depicting the torturous limbo of the grieving in such a situation. Caleb is a little idealized, but that just makes the romance of the romance sweeter, and the sorrow that brings Emma and Caleb [End Page 282] together is sensitively handled. Ultimately, there are two love stories: that of Emma and Caleb, and that of Emma’s family finding its way to reconstruction, and for both, the poignancy sharpens their sweetness. Copyright © 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois