Note: This copy of A Harvest of Hearts was provided by NetGalley.

When the blurb of a book mentions a cosy fantasy for fans of Howl’s Moving Castle and The House in the Cerulean Sea, it’s a no-brainer that the book would be a good read. Sadly, this did not seem to be the case here.

A Harvest of Hearts is a tale of magic, or more precisely heart magic. In this world we are introduced to, magic is only performed by a very few select individuals and is done so with pieces of a person’s heart. This on it’s own doesn’t seem like an issue but when it comes to be known that these sorcerers enthrall and ‘snag’ innocent people from villages to take pieces of, if not their whole, heart, then it takes on a less than cosy vibe. These people do not die immediately (because magic, duh), but slowly wither away. Then they die. The hearts though are required for the protection of the kingdom, and so it’s okay.

The story follows Foss Butcher, the daughter of, well, a butcher from a small village who is inadvertently snagged by a male sorcerer as he visits her village. Once snagged Foss feels an excruciating tug towards the sorcerer and so she sets out to the central kingdom to find him in order to get back her heart she fears he’s snagged. The character of Foss was very underwhelming in my opinion. There are several situations of her bemoaning her appearance, contradicting her own words/actions within a few paragraphs, has very little situational awareness and how to behave, and in general came across as very hard to like. The brooding ‘evil’ male sorcerer on the other hand, is painted as this mysterious figure who for some reason (love probably, who even knows at this point) decides that Foss is someone special to him and worth protecting. We also have a cat who learns to talk, and a moody extra-dimensional magic house.

The main idea of the book was quite intriguing in the beginning but the story soon became quite, unnecessarily, confusing. While the idea of ‘heart magic’ of a sort is quite interesting, there are just so many random occurrences and situations that we don’t see addressed even at the end of the book, outside of having to assume ‘its probably because of magic’. There are even situations in the book that felt very over-the-top and were done to add a sense of urgency to the story, which didn’t really work for me.

This book also did not feel like a cosy read in any sense of the word. If you’re familiar with Howl’s Moving Castle then you may enjoy this book because there are similarities; a lot of them. It’s just hard to ignore at times. The one character that always made me happy when they made an appearance was Cornelius, the cat. Other than that, unfortunately, the book was a disappointing read with a mishmash of trying too many things while accomplishing very little. Sadly, would not recommend.

Rating: 2/5

Links:

• Goodreads: A Harvest of Hearts