Review: My Heart and Other Black Holes

My Heart and Other Black Holes
Author: Jasmine Warga
Publication Date: February 10th 2015
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
~A copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review~

Sixteen-year-old physics nerd Aysel is obsessed with plotting her own death. With a mother who can barely look at her without wincing, classmates who whisper behind her back, and a father whose violent crime rocked her small town, Aysel is ready to turn her potential energy into nothingness.

There’s only one problem: she’s not sure she has the courage to do it alone. But once she discovers a website with a section called Suicide Partners, Aysel’s convinced she’s found her solution: a teen boy with the username FrozenRobot (aka Roman) who’s haunted by a family tragedy is looking for a partner.

Even though Aysel and Roman have nothing in common, they slowly start to fill in each other’s broken lives. But as their suicide pact becomes more concrete, Aysel begins to question whether she really wants to go through with it. Ultimately, she must choose between wanting to die or trying to convince Roman to live so they can discover the potential of their energy together. Except that Roman may not be so easy to convince

After reading All the Bright Places last year, I was a little apprehensive about reading My Heart and Other Black Holes, because of the mess All the Bright Places left me in. So I am so glad I can say that I loved My Heart and Other Black Holes for some of the reasons why I loved All the Bright Places and for other reasons that All the Bright Places didn't give me. Hope.

 Like with All the Bright Places, My Heart and Other Black Holes is about two broken people finding each other, trying to survive while determined to die, and in Aysels case, afraid to do it on her own because she might flake out, and in Romans case, he needs a partner to help him get around his Mother. But what My Heart and Other Black Holes is about, really about, how one person can help you, change you. I know it sounds clichéd and everything, but one person can really make a difference, an life or death difference, and while it's also about depression, it's not really about depression. It's about fighting back from it, it's about not letting it take you over, it's about understanding that maybe today is bad, but tomorrow might be better, that  you may want to die today, but what about tomorrow? You don't know what tomorrow's going to be like, you can't live for tomorrow if you're living in the past. It's about moving forward, and I loved Aysels journey in understanding that. I connected with her, but I couldn't connect to Roman that much, I got his reasons and everything, but maybe it's because we didn't have his perspective? I liked him enough to care, but not as much as I would've if we got to know him, his voice better.

I mentioned hope, I felt a lot more of it in My Heart and Other Black Holes than I did with All the Bright Places, and not just because it's a different outcome to a similar story, but because it truly does focus more on hope than depression, it's about depression, obviously, and as of all the reasons above, it's the hope of getting through today, the hope of things changing for the better, of tomorrow, of the future, the hope of love and a support system, of family, of connections and living and life, and that you're not alone. 

My Heart and Other Black Holes has such a great message to tell, one that you should pass on to someone, and them onto someone else, because you could save that person.

Rating: 4/5