It took awhile to get into this book. A lot of twists and turns. There was many different emotions throughout the book, and it crossed several genres. It ended up being a good book once I got into it.

I am incredibly stubborn, and will read books and watch movies all the way to the end, even bad ones, simply to see if they somehow magically get better towards the end. That being said, I had a VERY hard time finishing this one. It was just so ridiculous, there had to be some plot twist at the end..."surprise, it was all a dream!" or something similar. Alas, that did not happen, so here we are. Please forgive me if this review is rather disjointed, I am unable to come up with the words to make sense of this. It was so unrealistic and absolutely ridiculous, I was focusing on that more than the plot.

What I did glean from the plot was so confusing...I would probably have to read it again just to figure it out. There was just no logic to any of it. There was little to no thought behind actions of the characters. For instance, the main character missed three or four days of class, and decided the only course of action at that point was to drop out of college. Hello, what??! A classmate he met on the first day of class did not show up on the second day, so he says she has to have been taken by someone. Again...what?! He's also remarkably dumb. He drank a LOT of spiked punch at a party, and didn't realize it was spiked (not sure how that happens), and it didn't even occur to him that the weird feeling he had was, in fact, drunkenness. He also went to a strip club and tried to make change for a $10 bill with the singles on the stage. This act almost got him shot in the head by the owner of the club. (See? Unrealistic.)

One way I described this to a friend is that it's as if someone simply transcribed a TV show, with mostly dialog and some of the action, but with little to no insight into the characters' thoughts and motivations. It was just very confusing.

Now let's talk about the actual writing. The main character's sister called him "bro" or "brother" just about every other sentence she said to him. Also, I've never said this before: the lack of pronouns is annoying. The characters are almost always referred to by their given names, even when it is obvious who is talking or being talked about, so using pronouns would not have caused confusion. There is also an inordinate amount of screaming. Just for funsies, I did a search, and the word "scream" or some variation of it was used 78 times in the book. The interwebs tells me the book is 198 pages, so that's someone screaming approximately every 2.5 pages (for a lot of those, "yelled" or "called out to" would have been much more appropriate). Personally, I find that just as jarring as reading text that is written in all caps.

Would I recommend it? Sure, if you want to bang your head against the wall for a couple hours. But whatever you do, don't make up a drinking game for this one, alcohol poisoning is no joke.

Many thanks to Netgalley for providing me with a review copy of this for review.

I feel that the story lacked form, started well but then it twisted and there was no meaning, I feel that the plot was lost
☹️☹️
I have many doubts
Why was Nate chosen?
Why did Nate go through this?
Who is the girl and why did she chase and curse him?

Bit of a weird book but surprisingly really entertaining. My only problem is that the dialogue seems unreal and slightly forced in a few places.

As many said on Goodreads. the writing was not great and I had a hard time keeping interested. Numerous parts were boring. I hate to give negative feedback so I will not link this to Goodreads. There is plenty of feedback there for others to review. Also, as many started confusing!

Book Talk 2…6/29/18
Traci Kenworth

The Rise of Hearts by Antoinne Bonner. Amazon Digital Services. Netgalley.

Amazon blurb: Nathaniel’s always been a loser—his only friend is his sister, and girls don’t want anything to do with him. But when he’s given a miraculous gift that allows him to attract the girl of his dreams, he realizes that a gift can also be a curse.

My review: I hate to give a bad review, but this book is confusing. One minute, it’s about a boy going to school then these dream things start happening. I’m not sure what’s reality and what isn’t. I gave up after forty-five pages. I know how hard author’s work and I hate to sound the doom on them. But when you can’t figure out what genre a book is, what it’s about, and what’s going on, it’s hard to read on.

Well.

This was an odd one.

Rise of the Hearts has a great blurb, and a beautiful, striking cover. Unfortunately it reads like the stream of consciousness of an adolescent boy telling you his (unedited!) dreams from the previous night.

The style of writing is very basic and juvenile in construction, and the mixture of egotism and self-loathing permeating the narrative voice adds to the overall impression of immaturity fuelled by hormones and angst. These are not automatically negative points, as they can be very effective in a book aimed at teens. This, however, is not that book: the sudden shift from school shenanigans to explicit sexual content made that implicitly clear.

Trigger warning for casual references to domestic violence and rape at various points throughout.

I began by finding some of the characters and dialogue offensive, but quickly realised that there was little merit in taking offense as the author pebble-dashes offense over everything the narrative touches on: white, black, Asian, female, trans, gay, sex, drugs, bodily functions – all are introduced and handled in as insensitive a way as possible. Is there such a thing as being ‘everything-ist’?!

There is no character development and the relationships are frankly bizarre, as the main character makes instant best friends with characters he does not know (or even seem to like) and gathers enemies equally easily and quickly. Characters come and go in the narrative with no impact on the emotions or plot, and the plot itself makes little sense at any point.

Most of the story focuses on the slapstick adventures of Nate and his incompetence at every aspect of life. The one interesting and entertaining aspect of the plot is the horror thread (which appears to be heavily influenced by Ring), but it weaves inconsistently in and out of the narrative and comes to an abrupt end just as it starts to become engaging.

I cannot in all honesty recommend this book to anyone. I can find the positives in most books, but all I can manage here is that it was entertaining in the way that only very poorly written fiction can be. Sorry!

This book is a mash up of an adolescent teen boy's wet dream, coupled with a slasher movie, and set in a supernatural world. And I honestly don't know what the author's point was. I know that I am supposed to start with something positive about the book, so.....I finished it. That is about the best that I can do.

It is written in an extremely amateurish, voyeuristic style of writing, with graphic, meaningless violence and sexual tableus, and unbelievable characters.

And the ending? Baffling.

In good conscience, I cannot recommend it to anyone. I hate to be so harsh to a struggling writed, but it really deserves a zero.

I couldn't finish this book. The writing is poorly handled and the story is not coherent at all. The characters are bland and the dialogue is incredibly childish and in parts immature.

Wow, I don't even know how to begin reviewing this book. Rise of the Hearts is just a big jumble of confusion and very immature writing. I have never heard of this author before so I don't know his writing experience, but this book was written with a very immature writing style - or I should say, all the characters in this book were very immature in thoughts and actions.
While I'm going to give this book a 2 star rating because I appreciate this author's efforts in trying to write a mystery/suspense type of story, I can't fathom how this book could have a possible continuation as the ending is led to believe. I mean, the ending just ended like that- nothing else. And I don't plan on continuing reading the sequel if there is one. Perhaps if the author has a strong editor then his skills might improve, but this book truly was just a jumble of strangeness.
The beginning was very strange and even stranger scenes get put in for what I assume should be mysterious and gripping. The main character, Nathaniel is both naive and clueless and his thoughts and actions are very irrational. His sister, Kim seems to be the only one, in my opinion, to be better written. Although she was younger than Nathaniel, she seemed to be more rational than him. But still, out of nowhere she does something completely irrational and out of character that I'm just like, "what the heck happened there?" It's like the author is trying to desperately hold on to the mystery of this story.
I'm not going to go further into details because I truly don't know how else to review it. I think there are some reviews on here already that explains the strangeness of this book and the incomplete and jumbleness of this entire story. I think the author had a good premise but the writing is just all over the place, without any real meaning or value to the characters or situations.
Thank you for the ARC and I truly hope this author find some good editors to help him along.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for review.
I have tried to read this book but I cannot bring myself to open it and read another word.
The cover of this book is amazing and makes you think it will be so good.
The part I read was so boring I can not read anymore. I would give it zero stars if that was an option but since it isn't I will give it one star for the beautiful cover work.

I don't know how i got through this book. There is not one word that makes any sort of sense in it. The word "Vomit" is totally overused and in reality describes what this book makes me feel like doing. It is quite simply the worst book i have ever read and if i could i would zero rate it

I could not finish this book. I thought it was just dreadful.
I had high hopes, as it was my type of genre but it didn't not meet my expectations

DNF at 15%.

I ordinarily don’t read books that I dislike, but because I received a free copy of this ebook from NetGalley, I forced myself to keep reading past the first couple of pages, when it became clear to me that I <i>really</i> didn’t like it. I lasted until the 15% mark. I don’t want to rub it in, but the writing style is dreadful, choppy, and inconsistent. The main character is unlikeable and two dimensional. The plot is ridiculous. That said, the cover is gorgeous.
1 star.

*I received a copy of this ebook from NetGalley for an honest review*

The Rise of Hearts was an unusual read to me. The supernatural aspects would appeal to a specific audience who enjoy such things. I believe that this book is well suited for a teen audience.

I would argue that this is not a YA book. There are graphic scenes including sexual details that are beyond the YA reader. This story is a quick read because it is light on details. Characters are very one dimensional. I didn't enjoy the story and really don't recommend it.

From the first page this book felt ridiculously forced. The dialogue was silly and painfully overdone, and chapter transitions were often abrupt. It almost feels like it was written by someone who doesn't speak English as a native because the grammar and writing was all over the place. The dialogue is robotic and the characters are like caricatures written by someone who doesn't understand natural social interactions. The present-tense writing style doesn't help either. Obviously something about the description of this story compelled me to read it but the writing was so forced and unrealistic that I didn't finish. I skipped around and finally read the end - glad I didn't bother trying to read the whole thing because the ending was just as bad. I am sorry to give such a harsh review but this was painful.

I received this book as an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Well..... I don't really know where to start with this one!!

The story is based around Nathaniel, who is a loser at everything and a loner as he has no friends. He is given the chance to get everything that he wants but that chance comes with a price.

It's definitely a unique storyline which at times is completely unbelievable and at others really quite brilliant!! It took a long time for the storyline to develop and then it felt like no sooner had we finally found out what it was the book ended - rather abruptly for me.


Its classified as horror/humour and that is true, I just don't however, think that it's for me.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I tried a few times to read this book but I could not get past the first few pages. Just not the type of book for me.

Thank you to #Netgalley and the publisher/author for giving this to me in exchange for an honest review.

First, this book cover is what caught my eye while looking on Netgalley. Great job to the cover artist.
Second, the book cover does not make the book a good book.

There were so many errors with this book. I can not give a full review because I did have to DNF the book. I wanted to try to finish it since I did get it from Netgalley as an advance copy but I have learned to DNF a book if I can not make it through.

This book should have been sent off for a good review before posting. Now with that being said, I don't know if they actually didn't do that but it just feels like the editor or someone that reviewed this book would have told the author some other direction to take.