Review of A Harvest of Hearts by Andrea Eames

What would you do if someone stole your heart? Literally, actually took it from your body but you didn’t die? Because hearts power their magic. Such a perfect premise for a story, and Andrea Eames explores it well in A Harvest of Hearts. I received an eARC from NetGalley and Erewhon Books in return for a review.

Foss is a simple country girl, daughter of the village butcher. Then one day, a sorcerer comes and snags her heart. She journeys to the city to look for him and demand it back, ending up as his housekeeper, where she unravels the mysteries of this kingdom and the sorceresses who keep harvesting hearts. The truth is darker and bleaker than you probably want to know, yet to Foss, it is literally about her life.

Let me start with some criticism. A Harvest of Hearts is too long. This would work a lot better as a novella. It has a fairy tale quality and reminds me of The Wizard of Oz (and actually some of Baum’s less well-known sequels to that original story). However, the characterization and pacing leaves a lot to be desired.

Eames’s writing style is exposition-heavy at the start, which is not my jam at the moment. It was hard for me to get into the story, stay interested, and care a lot about the stakes. Even as those stakes became higher, I felt like I was only caring about Foss because she’s the protagonist and what’s happening to her is objectively bad, versus, you know, actually being interested in the story.

Part of that might be because the actual plot feels fairly predictable. I had figured out who the king was, what was going on with Sylvester, the whole backstory of the kingdom, from about … oh, I don’t know by the time Foss got to the city? Nothing at all about this book surprised me. While I don’t object to that on principle, I expect the execution to be correspondingly astounding, and that’s not happening here.

On the other hand, I finished it. There’s sweet moments. Foss and Sylvester’s relationship truly grows from nothing and deepens into something real and special. And then there’s Cornelius—oh, Cornelius! I would die for Cornelius. He’s excellent. He is everything a talking cat should be.

A Harvest of Hearts stands out because of its original premise and the chemistry of the two main characters. Eames has the storybook aesthetic for worldbuilding down, albeit in a way that is heavier on exposition than I would like. This is a fun yet weighty story with a lot to recommend it. That being said, it wasn’t quite for me.