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A review by hiii_ris
Hearts & Other Body Parts by Ira Bloom
3.0
Entertaining and fun, with the tongue in cheek style of young adult fantasy that I liked from The Evil Librarian (one of my favs) but wasn't that strong in characterization or development. There was a lot of telling not showing, and I felt like I kept being told what the characters were instead of just feeling it myself.
The biggest annoyance was that Esme was supposed to the level headed and ruled by her brain, but she was irrational and emotional when she shouldn't have been multiple times even after not being under (what was essentially) hypnosis. And all in all, I think the characters were all just one stock personality trait without much else to them (Esme is smart, Katy is fun, Ronnie is beautiful) and also there were some unfortunate implications when a character accepts his sexuality. It's cool to have a character come to terms with it, but he previously didn't have any personality and suddenly is just characterized by being gay (it's just done in a way that I found uncomfortable). I also didn't really like the scene after Esme gets clarity because it's literally reducing her classmates to a single trait, as if a person is actually defined by one major thing.
Besides these things it was a fun ride and had a lot of positives.
The biggest annoyance was that Esme was supposed to the level headed and ruled by her brain, but she was irrational and emotional when she shouldn't have been multiple times even after not being under (what was essentially) hypnosis. And all in all, I think the characters were all just one stock personality trait without much else to them (Esme is smart, Katy is fun, Ronnie is beautiful) and also there were some unfortunate implications when a character accepts his sexuality. It's cool to have a character come to terms with it, but he previously didn't have any personality and suddenly is just characterized by being gay (it's just done in a way that I found uncomfortable). I also didn't really like the scene after Esme gets clarity because it's literally reducing her classmates to a single trait, as if a person is actually defined by one major thing.
Besides these things it was a fun ride and had a lot of positives.