Haunting and hopeful, this spellbinding Istanbul-set mystery unravels a teenager’s hidden heritage to free her from the curse of death-by-heartbreak.
The Book of Heartbreak is a love letter to human connection and a warning against keeping family secrets that fester and poison generations to come, Equal parts intriguing and illuminating, author Ova Ceren’s magical mystery is worth passing down.
We meet seventeen-year-old Sare when she learns that her mother died in an accident earlier that day. This shocking news is not only devastating, but life-threatening for Sare, who has been cursed to die by heartbreak: “If your heart breaks five times before the age of eighteen, your mortal life will finish.” So far, Sare’s heart has broken four times, killing her four times. After each death, she wakes up in the ‘inbetween,’ where Munu, her assigned ethereal guardian (a small-but-mighty, very bossy, winged magical being who —due to celestial department budget constraints— appears only when needed) resurrects Sare.
“They say that your life flashes before your eyes when you die, but mine never has. Perhaps it was because the pain is blinding, or perhaps it was the sad fact that nothing noteworthy happened in my life except for dying.” Munu has always warned Sare to live in isolation, protecting herself from any potential heartbreak so that she’ll survive until her eighteenth birthday, when the curse ends. Now, six months before her eighteenth birthday, the heartbreak of her mother’s death is her fifth, the final death she can survive. One more heartbreak and she’ll die.
At her mother’s funeral, a man introduces himself as Sare’s grandfather, inviting her to come back to Istanbul with him. This is how Sare learns that her mother lied about her grandfather’s death. The truth is that the father and daughter had an argument so earth-shattering that Sare’s mother fled her home in Istanbul and raised her daughter alone in the UK. “In a single instant [Sare’s mother, Daphne] becomes a stranger. A liar. A fake. A fraud.” Sare agrees to go with her grandfather, looking forward to being “miles away from all the heartbreaks” she had in Cambridge, for a fresh start somewhere she can learn about her mother while waiting to turn eighteen.
Sare finds Istanbul awe-inspiring, an ancient city that calls to mind all the folktales her mother shared:“This is a view Daphne recreated so many times in her paintings—and just one glance makes me grasp why she could never let Istanbul, Konstantiniyye or Constantinople go. The city of seven hills, many names and sovereigns is built on top of long-lost stories, and it imprints itself on you.” But Sare’s grandfather makes no effort to spend time with her. Their only contact (at mandated mealtimes) reveals his increasing amounts of medication and frequent doctor’s visits, which Sare doesn’t ask about because she can’t risk another heartbreak. The family home in Istanbul is set to a rhythm of rules enforcing silence, locked doors, and dark, haunted, horrific secrets hidden away in tragedy —a setting reminiscent of Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood.
When Sare ventures out to escape this chilling house, she meets Leon, a teenage boy “as radiant as the setting sun… enchanting, as if someone handcarved the most symmetrical, angelic features from marble and blew life into them.” Far from polite, he asks about Munu (“I’m informed about every ethereal authorized to roam in Istanbul right now, and your sassy sprite isn’t one of them.”) which shocks Sare because she’s never met someone who can even see Munu, and has never imagined she would ever be able to talk to someone who knows about “fate mechanics and cosmic harmony.”
Leon introduces himself as a seer on a divine-appointed quest to find an ancient journal that belonged to a famous cursebreaker who documented how he broke a generational curse in this very town. “This makes me pause. A cursebreaker? Curses can be broken?” Sare’s mind races at the possibility of this unfathomable betrayal. “The revelation slams into me, louder than Istanbul’s frantic pulse, twisting hope and dread together in my stomach. All these years, despite how many times I asked, Munu never breathed a word of this.”
The teenagers agree to work together to find and interpret this curse-breaking journal. “I’ve tried every form of suffering,” Leon tells Sare when he finds her holding the elusive book and somehow able to read the ancient seer’s Turkish notes. “But nothing brought me the book until you did.” In the ancient journal, they find a handdrawn portrait of the cursed maiden; She has Sare’s face and wears the same gold pendant that Sare’s mother gifted her. Their romance is not the primary focus of this book but something within each teenager glows when they meet, and it brightens every time they are together:“For the first time in my life, my heart followed a lead other than the curse’s, and beat in time with his.” “Each time my skin touches Leon’s, I feel momentarily free from the curse’s grasp.” —Is it teenage desire or destiny? Everything about Leon and Sare’s connection feels fated. Their research about curses destined to reappear, tragedies repeating, and death looming over teenagers in love is a mystical intoxication that fans of gothic fantasy romance like Beautiful Creatures will adore. “He and I, we’re not meant for each other. A boy destined for madness if he loves someone who cannot love him in return, and a girl who’ll perish if her heart breaks once more.” They don’t quite trust each other, but Leon’s determination that her presence is a sign that he can solve this curse is intoxicating. Held captive for seventeen years, and now she could be free? “Hope is dangerous for me, and Leon is full of it.”
Good Omens fans will enjoy the curse-related bureaucracy that fuels the story’s cosmic drama through passive-aggressive emails about paperwork from angels with hilariously drab administrative job titles like Divine Data Officer. These humorous beats balance the heartache of human tragedy, perfectly matching the tone and torturous administrative realms of Sign Here by Claudia Lux. The suspicion of human trafficking among the angels (“We sourced talent from the dominion, rebranded and reused them. There are hundreds in service, cherub.” “Do you know how much angels cost? Demons are a cheaper workforce.”) and the way Sare urgently defies the rules while she’s learning what they are will appeal to fans of the fate-defying romance film The Adjustment Bureau.
The Book of Heartbreak asks questions about destiny, fate, and emotional inheritance. Can you escape your family history? Can you protect yourself from fate? Is a life without love worth living? How much does the truth corrupt when we pass stories down through generations? Ceren’s gorgeously written, stunning twists and turns are so thrilling I feared my own heart would shatter.
The Book of Heartbreak is for readers who enjoy relic-hunting adventures and stories with historical charm that begins to seem all the more sinister. Women fall from watch towers, their deaths attributed to natural disasters; Heartbreak shutters family lines of communication, and the fierce longing in Sare grows into desperation to find her place in a family that’s committed to locking their past away. There’s something tremendously powerful about this story honoring modern teenagers on a heritage quest about family record-keeping. Sare’s family archives bring her closer to her mother even after her death, helping her find compassion for the woman she misunderstood, bringing her grandfather closure for seventeen years worth of self-sabotaging secrets. I’m hopeful that this spellbinding novel will inspire an interest in its readers to visit museum archives and ask their grandparents difficult questions.
Ova Ceren writes yearning, sorrow, and dazzling darkness with such profound, unrelenting emotion that it feels like a gift to read. Piercing, poignant truths about what it means to be human and how it feels to be abandoned and betrayed and misunderstood. This is a story of hope, of heritage and humanity that leaves both Sare and its readers feeling empowered to “choose love and not hate. Choose hope, not despair. Choose life, not death. Choose courage.” The author leaves room for a sequel (“Perhaps there’s much more about myself I’m yet to discover,” Sare tells us), but whether we reunite with Sare or are invited into another world, I’ll pick up the next Ceren book in a heartbeat.
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