Rise of the Hearts

Rise of the Hearts was a nice, enjoyable, somewhat scary book! It had a quite unique storyline with twists and turns. I enjoyed it!

I voluntarily read and reviewed a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book. It took a while to get into this story. It dragged on for quite a bit, although it turned out to be a very good read. A lot of it was just so unbelievable. Nate is so gullible and maybe a bit thick. Good story, good characters. Didn’t like the ending.

Very interesting read! so many twisting and turns really make you feel emotionally connected with the main character. Hopefully there will be a second book because I dont feel like this story is over yet! I didn’t want this to end. Definitely recommend it to people that love a good story.

Rise of the Hearts
by Antoine Bonner (Goodreads Author)
M 50x66
barth gimball's review Mar 21, 2018 · edit
it was amazing

A delight from cover to cover. Fun, good pace, great characters and original.

What a curious book. Dubbed as a horror, but heavily infiltrated by farcical humour with coming of age older teenagers. It is narrated by Nathanial, the older brother with no friends that just starts classes in college. He immediately makes friends with 2 very unusual girls and their provocative and cult like friends. Green beyond belief, he is exploited by those he meets through them, handing money over fists for the hope of some sexual encounters. He has the opposite of the Midas touch.

There is a supernatural element with the intermittent presence of a young girl with pink heart shaped irises that invades his dreams and sometimes wakefulness, citing ‘Nobody is going to love you like I do’. And life becomes a whole lot more complicated from this point forward as he encounters more and more dilemmas.

It has an indie feel to the writing, albeit I am not sure what this book is trying to be. It inhabits an altered reality. It doesn’t have a strong structure and the story jumps along via loose plot lines. It isn’t a very long a read, which allows you to see it through to its odd denouement. It’s a bit weird, wacky and off the wall. So if you like farce and can suspend reality it will work for you. Given the ending I suspect a second instalment is being lined up too.

Rise of the Hearts is one huge creepy and weird story. The story started off with a guy named Nate and he's a certified nerd who jas been bullied all through out his childhood. Nate has a sister, Kim, and a neglectful mother. With everything that he's been through, the hero has been accepting of his circumstances in life, be it with friendship especially his love life that's actually, NADA. ZILCH. ZERO. But that has been okay with him because he has his younger sister with him, his champion. But everything changes from boring to full tilt one day.


"I'm not sure what I’m jotting down, but I feel my hand moving. In the middle of a nod, I’ve drawn a pink heart on my paper. I sit in my seat , confused, trying to figure out where I even got a pink pen from."


From that day onwards, something slowly changes in his life. And he's left to deal with all of it because even Nate himself can't explain what's been happening.


Truth be told, I quite had a fun time reading this. I eventually conmected with the main character and I kind of symphatize him. But I was not, and I say I wasn't really keen on the first few chapters of this book. I understand that this is just a rough draft and everything else is yet to be edited and I'm really hoping for that. This book has quite a potential to make it because it's entertaining enough especially towards the final chapters that I am glad I finished this. Reading this was like watching a dumb movie. You know it's kind of stupid but hey, you're still enjoying yourself, so why quit? Hope you catch my drift.

Anyways, the content of the story was amazing but there were some scenes, especially on the first few chapters that was just not attention-grabbing. It would really spoil the story, the book itself, to it's potential readers. A little bit of retouch probably won't hurt.

Overall, a little on the side of weird and creepy, horror-ish as others have referred it, it's not a book for everyone who easily gets bored and iffed reading a main character being so naive and dumb-ish. But that's just the appeal of the character once you really get into the story. He's gullible but that's just because he's quite socially akward.

The ending though was not one that I expected. It's actually a swift turn of event that blindsided me, but it adds character to the story.

It took me a bit to get into this story, but when I did, I was hooked. I loved Nathaniel as a character and cared about his journey. I liked that the book brought out a lot of different emotions as well as the different types of genres that parts of this book could fall into. It was a very unique story and one that I won't forget. Good read!

This is a NetGalley book.
I had a hard time getting into this one. The start of the book was her slow and seem to drag for me. Nothing interesting was happening. Nathaniel is the main character. He has a sister, Kim and his mom. They all live in the same home. Nathaniel is in college and is extremely gullible. He falls for any sob story a pretty girl tells him. Any "friend" he thinks he has just wants to use or manipulate him. His younger sister protected him from his high school bullies! He is the most naively trusting person. He had one person who he really liked, Treah, and he's pretty sure she felt the same, but he was to shy to find out before she moved away. Nathaniel keeps seeing eyes with pink hearts, he thinks he might be loosing his mind. He thinks maybe those pink hearts stop bad things from happening, he might be going crazy!
I think this book was well written. The story and concept were original. The characters were all quite different.
I think Nate was a bit to gullible to be believable. I would have liked to known more about Treah, like what she is. I didn't like the ending.
This book has it's good points and bass, but worth the read in my opinion.

All I can say about this book is....WOW....weird!

I don't know how else to describe it really. It sucked me in straight away and I literally couldn't stop reading it. I was pretty shocked at some of the descriptions at times, although I would mark this as YA, it's definitely older YA.

Essentially Nathaniel makes a deal which will ensure his life is charmed....but the cost is high.

It's so hard to say what year this book is supposed to be set in - sometimes it feels current but more often feels like it's futuristic. We never find out exactly how old Nathaniel is either, although his sister celebrates her 18th birthday in the book.

It's a pretty dark book although I wouldn't class it as horror. It really is hard to describe without giving anything away - a very curious and strange novel which I found I loved.

The only disappointment to me was the ending - I actually thought my kindle had cut off the rest of the book and was searching for the ending - but no, that was the ending. Surely the story can't be finished here? I really hope there are going to be more parts to this story!

All in all, a weird one you'll either love or hate - personally, I loved it.