This is a book that I love with all my heart and soul, a 6/5 star rating for sure, what brought this on exactly is the fact that i started Heart Shaped Box a week or so ago and am totally in love with it.
I read this when I was on a trip with my dad this summer. My dad and I really don’t get along that well so I brought as much reading material as I could and this along with Patrick Ness’ The Knife Of Never Letting Go were top priority. Needless to say, I finished both and between those two books, I felt a lot of things.
I reviewed this on Goodreads already (original review:), but I still feel like some stuff was left unsaid, so after going through this book again and highlighting my most favorite parts, I’m going to talk in-depth about how much I love this book.
The back cover of the book reads as follows: Merrin Williams is dead, slaughtered under inexplicable circumstances, leaving her beloved boyfriend Ignatius Perrish as the only suspect. On the anniversary of Merrin’s murder, Ig spends the night drunk and doing awful things. When he wakes up the next morning he has a thunderous hangover . . . and horns growing from his temples. Ig possesses a terrible new power to go with his terrible new look—a macabre gift that he intends to use to find the monster who killed his one true love. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. Now it’s time for revenge . . .
Are you intrigued yet? Of course you are. I’ll try to keep this as spoiler free as possible.
Throughout the book, we are introduced to different people that Ig has met throughout his childhood, we get to meet them as kids, and now as adults. Joe is Stephen’s son, so we can of course expect some flashbacks at awful times, and quite a bit of back-and-forth present-past-present going on. Typically I hate that, I started this book twice before I finished it, but as soon as I got far enough in, I was gone. The pain I felt for Ig about Merrin’s death, especially towards the end of the book was so hard. I was really able to relate to the situation towards the end, and Joe’s writing had my heart in a vice-grip ’til the very end.
Now that I’m here, and that I’ve agreed to be spoiler free, there’s actually not a lot I can say for this as far as plot goes, but my favorite concepts from this book I think were all the theological references, and also the Tree House of The Mind. Again, unless you read it, it’s hard to explain but the Tree House of The Mind was a place that Ig and Merrin found wandering through the woods near town, also containing many biblical references itself, the house featured many christian figurines and candles, like an altar. They slept together in the tree house and had to leave abruptly after. They never found the tree house again, however. They searched and searched, even after Merrin had died, Ignatius searched and could never find it. Merrin had called it The Tree House of The Mind because they couldn’t be certain if it had existed physically, they only remembered it in their minds. I think it’s a lovely concept.
I was immensely excited to watch the movie after I got home from my trip! It had been on my Netflix list for ages and I was waiting until I finished the book, but of course because it’s just my luck, it was gone!
But until I finally do get to see it, I’m probably going to continue reading the book and imagining it as a movie.
Thanks for tuning in!
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