Me on The Hearts We Sold

Title: The Hearts We Sold
Author: Emily Lloyd-Jones
Release Date: August 8, 2017
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (Hachette Book Group imprint)

When Dee Moreno makes a deal with a demon—her heart in exchange for an escape from a disastrous home life—she finds the trade may have been more than she bargained for. And becoming "heartless" is only the beginning. What lies ahead is a nightmare far bigger, far more monstrous than anything she could have ever imagined. With reality turned on its head, Dee has only a group of other deal-making teens to keep her grounded, including the charming but secretive James Lancer. And as something grows between them amid an otherworldly ordeal, Dee begins to wonder: Can she give someone her heart when it's no longer hers to give?

The Hearts We Sold is eerie, serious and dangerous. It's as much about consequences when we make a deal with the devil as it is about what makes us human, what we want and what pushes us. The places we want to escape and the places we end up, the people we end up with.

Dee is mixture of things. She's smart and practical, she's serious. She's lonely and afraid, worried about the future and afraid of her past. She's looking to get out of a bad situation, looking at high school and hopefully college as a way to get free. When things go south, when the situation is dire, she's looking to make a deal. Dee doesn't take the decision, her deal with the demon, lightly, but it certainly isn't what she expected. Others who've made deals have lost fingers or toes, arms or legs. Losing her heart? A little different, especially considering the condition that comes with it. But it's the choice she made, and she has to live with it.

This book is part monsters, part consequences, part humanity, and part lonely people cobbling together a family. Dee's home life is terrible, she wants her parents to be better, to accept her for who she is and what she wants to do, but they don't. But there are people who do, people she meets along the way, before and after her deal with the demon. What this book shows is that in so many ways, you both can and can't choose your family. But when you can, when it's people who understand you and are willing to support you, you'll do anything to keep them safe. I would definitely recommend this to those looking for complicated stories and complicated motives, fans of Brenna Yovanoff's first few books.

(I received an advance copy of this title to review from Hachette Book Group Canada.)