A Harvest of Hearts

In case we haven't met digitally before — Hi, my name is Jordyn, and I love to read. I especially love books about magic, cats, and love. It should come to absolutely no one's surprise that I adore the original book version of Howl's Moving Castle very much. So, when I saw that A Harvest of Hearts was immediately compared to Howl, well, I had to request a copy of it. I won't lie to you — I wasn't immediately taken with this book. However, it did grab me eventually, and I sunk very deep into the pages. A Harvest of Hearts is almost too-obviously inspired by Howl's Moving Castle. There's a sorcerer who lives in a magic house, and has to harvest hearts to do magic. There's enough different here that it works, but it is still VERY OBVIOUS where the author got her ideas from. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I do want to add!

Our main character is a young woman named Foss who describes herself as hardy, solid, squat, and ugly. Foss is extremely capable, and despite the way she feels about herself, seems to be liked well enough in her town. (Foss claims to be bullied by the other girls, but we see no evidence of that on page. However, a boy she has a crush on is mean to her.) Everything moves along at a plodding pace until we meet the Sorcerer — Sylvester. (Which as a name, I'm not going to lie, did not work for me. I just kept seeing the black and white cat cartoon.) Foss is immediately snagged by his magic, and has her life completely turned upside down. As for Sylvester, he is almost an exact copy of Howl, when it comes to personality. He's whiny, self-important, and vain. He does end up melting his ice-cold exterior eventually, but it does take quite a long time to get there. I don't even think I enjoyed his presence on page until well over half the book.

Through Foss's eyes we are shown why the magic-users must harvest hearts, and what they do with them. We see the horrors that the King is willing to do, and the horrid, toxic personality Sylvester's sisters actually have beneath their beautiful faces. It takes a good long while to get to any sort of point when it comes to the plot, however. We find out that Sylvester is young, and barely seems to know what he's doing when it comes to magic. We find out, eventually, that the King is a horrible person who steals street urchins right under everyone's noses. Right at the very end, we find out why Foss is so different compared to everyone else in her village.

There-in lies my problem with A Harvest of Hearts — it was about a hundred pages too long. While the story itself is very interesting, and the writing well done, the length it takes to get to any sort of resolution is somewhat irritating. This book could have been excellent, and many will probably have the opinion that it is so! Unfortunately for me, I believe it needed a heavy hand with the editing pen. Despite my complaints, I did enjoy most of this book. Three and a half stars.