My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga

 Title: My Heart and Other Black Holes

 Author: Jasmine Warga

 Publisher: Balzer + Bray

 Date Published: February 10, 2015

 Genre: Suicide, Contemporary

 Pages: 320 (hardcover)

 Age Range: 14+










                                               Summary:

     Sixteen-year-old physics nerd Aysel is obsessed with plotting her own death. With a mother who can barely look at her without wincing, classmates who whisper behind her back, and a father whose violent crime rocked her small town, Aysel is ready to turn her potential energy into nothingness.

     There's only one problem: she's not sure she has the courage to do it alone. But once she discovers a website with a section called Suicide Partners, Aysel's convinced she's found her solution—Roman, a teenage boy who's haunted by a family tragedy, is looking for a partner. Even though Aysel and Roman have nothing in common, they slowly start to fill in each other's broken lives. But as their suicide pact becomes more concrete, Aysel begins to question whether she really wants to go through with it. Ultimately, she must choose between wanting to die or trying to convince Roman to live so they can discover the potential of their energy together.

                                                 Review:

     My Heart and Other Black Holes brilliantly touches a few very heavy subjects without being too, well, heavy. This book has a fantastic cover, an amazingly developed plot, and a gripping set of characters. This was a book about suicide, without being one of those immensely depressing, and heavy suicide books.

     The set of characters in this book were very diverse. We have our depressed,haunted lead, Aysel. She much more relatable than I was expecting her to be. She came across as whiny, self-absorbed, and depressed in the beginning of the book. But as I continued to read, her plight began to make so much more sense to me. I did predict the whole thing about her dad that was supposed to be some plot twist, but it was still necessary to have Aysel spell it out for me. Roman was an amazing character. While Aysel was an acceptable lead, Roman was my favorite. Besides having good leads, we have Georgia and Tyler. I wasn't a huge fan of Georgia, but as the book went on, I started liking her more and more. I liked Tyler from the get-go and wished that we could've seen more of him.
     Besides characters, the plot of this book was really nice. I don't usually like suicide stories, but this one was captivating, and it portrayed depression in an accurate light. This book didn't aggrandize suicide or make it seem like a joke, which I liked. This book touched on heavy subjects without being condescending, or trying to be "cool" or trying to get the popular vote- it touched on these subjects realistically.
     Jasmine Warga has some really pretty writing, and I can't wait to see where she'll go next.