Review of “Anatomy of a Darkened Heart” by Christie Stratos

This felt like a book I would’ve had to read in an English Literature class in college – and I mean that in a good way.  Everything about the writing and the story felt legitimately true to the period, like this was an old, classic book I’d somehow missed all these years.

The writing is phenomenal.  It’s not a long book, and the author makes every word count.  Her descriptions are perfectly refined to give the reader exactly the amount of detail you need. The  plot certainly isn’t action-packed (that wouldn’t fit the genre at all), but the slow build works very well as you focus on the psychological aspects of the story.  I was never bored because the tension constantly increases as matters of the heart grow more and more complicated.

This book is, after all, about how these characters are “darkened.” I absolutely loved how I started thinking one character was maybe an okay person, but then they grew to be terrible.  And then another character did the same thing to me.  And then another.  Several times I said to the pages “Oh, no…” because a character would do something so evil to another character (keeping it vague here to avoid spoilers, but I literally gasped several times).  But, because the author does such a good job developing these characters, everything they did felt like a natural progression of their true nature.  And you STILL cared about them.

So, yeah, I recommend this one.  It’s not the kind of book you often see anymore, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

See it on Amazon!