Thank you, NetGalley and West 44 Books, for the chance to read and review Heart Like a Broken Arrow by Maija Barnett!
A HI/LO book in Verse
It’s essential to remember that West 44 Books exclusively publishes books for younger readers, so middle-grade and young adult. Hi/Lo (also hi-lo) means that the book covers a fascinating subject but is also at a low reading level. This article at Publishers Weekly is a great way to understand more about HI/LO books!
This is also not the first West 44 Book I’ve read! The other I’ve read is Everything You Left Me by Paige Classey!
Extra Tiny Book Review
Heart like a Broken Arrow, despite being a cheesy title, has a lot of interesting themes! Between the parents who are incredibly immature and are right out of the AITA subreddit, the guilt that goes on for years, the neglect and how the book was wrapped up, we get a really lovely story. Of course, we also have all the pain that goes along with hope.
Heart Like a Broken Arrows comes out on the 1st of April! I highly recommend it to Hi/LO fans or just readers who want to read a book on how those who become differently abled deal with the changes, and the support that many need and often lack! The section in the hospital was particularly horrifying to me, as was what the parents did!
Blurb
Seventeen-year-old Fern Blakely struggles to overcome her younger brother’s death, for which she feels responsible. Fern drinks to forget. After a night of partying, she crashes her truck on an icy Vermont road, and her life is changed forever. A former runner, Fern is now paralyzed from the waist down. Her depressed mother has neither the funds nor the ability to care for her, so Fern is sent to live with Helen, her estranged father’s aunt. It is with Helen that Fern overcomes her own depression and develops a love for archery. This passion sets Fern on a new path, but will she ever be able to outrun her past?
The Girl Who Reads 
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