I’ve heard endless good things about Keris’ books in the last few years, however despite actually attending an writing workshop with her once, i’ve only just gotten around to reading one of her books. My Heart Goes Bang was not on my radar at all, that was until all my friends started to give it five stars.
I read up on the synopsis of this book and realised that it was right up my street. One of my buzzwords in University, and i’ve been in the mood for some good summer contemporaries recently that i can read quickly and feel all lovely inside, this seemed to offer all those things.
Once i actually bought My Heart Goes Bang, i made sure it would be my next year. The story follows five friends who move in to a house together in their second year of university. It’s set over the entire second year and we delve in to the girls relationships as they try and complete the ‘Fuck It’ list – a list of certain boys that everyone should have slept with. Obviously this doesn’t go entirely to plan and all sorts of things happen.
In short, i adored this book. To begin with i thought i would find it particularly difficult to keep up with the characters and figuring out who is who, however they’re all very different, but realistic enough to keep up with them. Each character has a very different description of looks, and of personalities to an extent, but it’s not a Breakfast Club situation, everyone is very down to earth and realistic. I really loved that the most about this book, that you could really imagine these girls living together and being friends.
One thing that was also done incredibly well was the back story of each character. Because it was set over a year, there was plenty of time to explore each character and their family lives away from the uni house. I loved this because it allowed us to really see their individualities and how their whole lives didn’t revolve around uni (which is hard to believe for some authors i think). Having to do all the character building in three-hundred pages along with fleshing out the story is difficult, and this did all of it for me.
The best aspect of this book for me and what made me connect to it the most was the university. I could imagine this as my university and i was following the characters around my campus. I really enjoyed the way it was written and once again how realistic that felt to me. It was a true British uni experience, and that was refreshing after so many College stories from America.
There are so many more parts to this book that i want to rave about, including the fluffy and wonderful romances that kept me feeling all nice inside, and how the plot actually worked and played out in the end even though the idea of it was ruined quite early on. I think this is an incredibly written book and deserves so much more hype than it is getting at the moment.
I cannot wait to pick up more books by Keris and get my copy of My Heart Goes Bang signed at YALC this year.
The Little Contemporary Corner 