A review by minimicropup
Heft by Liz Moore

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Energy: Nuanced. Expressive. Raw. 
The Scene: 🇺🇸 A New Jersey town (I think), near Manhattan, NY 
The POVs: We follow two POVs. One is of a sensitive (perhaps overly so) professor who turned to food for comfort and became increasingly isolated after an accusation at work. The other is of an 18-year-old whose mother knew the former professor; they are trying to manage their mother’s illnesses while finding a way to expedite the start of their adult life when tragedy strikes. 
 
🎬 Tale-Telling: Audio brought the story to life, I would recommend it over text only. Arthur’s narrator used deep, sometimes labored breathing to mirror the character’s emotions. Kels narration was sometimes jarring because it’s written like an 18 year-old non-writer wrote it. The switch to his perspective would have been hard for me to read because it’s so simplistic and staccato, but his narrator captured that as a reflection of his youth and education by speaking with different emotion and tone.   
                             
👥 Characters: Arthur, Yolanda, and Kels were  loveable characters for me, while I found Charlene selfish and insufferable (I still wanted to read about her though). I loved the evolution of Arthur from perceived pretentiousness to a raw admission of his vulnerabilities. Kels was initially easy to dismiss as a stereotype, until we see why deeply hurt youth may start acting out from a place of fear and stress. 
 
🤓 Reader Role: We’re part bystander, part…friend? The characters kind of give personal essays asking us to understand them and feel their pain and triumphs. If you're drawn into their world, putting this book down becomes a challenge. If not, I imagine it would be so boring!
 
🗺️ Ambiance: The ambiance was crafted with emotional details. It was vibe heavy where each setting was ‘felt’ rather than described by detail. 
 
🔥 Fuel: The unfolding of characters' lives—pondering over the 'what ifs' and 'what will be's. Why are the characters the way they are? Will they rise above or self-destruct? 
 
🚙 Journey: A slow, steadily plodding story that just…ends. It captured life's complexities through its characters', with the the butterfly effect of decisions and their repercussions. The open-ended conclusion wasn’t horrible, parts of it I liked since it was left to reader interpretation whether it’s a sad or happy ending. But there is so little closure – we don’t know anything about some of the key mysteries for the characters and we aren’t sure how they end up just as a key moment is about to occur. It ended so abruptly I checked to see if my audiobook was broken.
 
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🐕 Howls: That ending….I need to talk to someone about that ending. 
🐩 Tail Wags: The realism. The way tragedy and sadness were balanced with moments of hope and happiness. The portrayal of the characters. 
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Mood Reading Match-Up:
  • Contemporary fiction with tragedies, slice of life snapshots, experiences
  • Heart wrenching and heartwarming character studies and plots
  • Moments of what-could-have-been romance and friendships
  • Themes of comfort, addiction, connection, childhood trauma, rejection, perception, struggle and resilience, belonging and acceptance. 
 
Content Heads-Up: Unhealthy obesity (medical, challenges, experience). 9/11 (brief recall). Mental illness (depression). Medical (autoimmune). Alcoholism, pharmaceutical drug abuse. Suicide, suicide attempts and thoughts. Parental rejection (of adult child). Parental neglect (physical). Loss of a parent. Loss of a friend.
 
Rep: White, Latina, and ambiguous Americans. Heterosexual. 
 
👀 Format: Library Audio
 
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