Review by Ginnamassa19 -- Heartaches 3 by H.M. Irwing

Ginnamassa19 · Post by **Ginnamassa19** » 06 May 2018, 04:13

[Following is a volunteer review of "Heartaches 3" by H.M. Irwing.]

1 out of 4 stars

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Heartaches 3 by H.M. Irwing is marketed as a steamy romance book—one that promises an intricate, fast-paced plot, strong, mysterious characters, and a heartbreakingly passionate romance between two broken characters searching for love.

The book seems to be a series of miniature plots all centred on revenge—as the story begins, readers find themselves smack dab in the middle of a plot to derail a marriage. The story then segues into what seems to be a mystery-thriller-type saga as the protagonists, Anna and Rafe, throw themselves into taking out a drug cartel…whose top bosses are apparently also responsible for Anna’s rape. This book is meant to wrap up the trilogy and thus does feature quite a few of the secondary characters finding their own happily-ever-afters, although I won’t spoil the ending for you with regards to the main pair—after all, that’s what a romance novel is all about, right?

The emotional struggle between characters is woven throughout the plot, and there is no shortage of emotional scenes—what with the emergence of a love triangle and a complicated family drama taking centre stage. Anna and Rafe go through a lot to be together, and there are plenty of scenes in which they interact, for those of you fervently rooting for them to end up together.

Here are some things to take note of before I go into what I liked and didn’t like about the novel:

First of all, this book is a steamy romance. That means it does contain one or two explicitly-written sex scenes—BDSM does make an appearance—so the novel is definitely not suitable for readers uncomfortable with mentions of sexual intercourse. (And readers below the age of 18.) While we’re on the topic of possible triggers, there are also mentions of rape and a minor character death in the novel—the story doesn’t go into too much detail about either of those, but I’d like to highlight them just in case!

Now that that’s done, let’s go into the novel.

The one most important requirement of a romance book, for me, is that it contain characters that make me want to root for them. Whose love tugs on my heartstrings.

Rafe and Anna didn’t fulfil that requirement for me, personally.

Perhaps it was because I hadn’t read the first two books of the Heartaches series, but their relationship seemed rather one-dimensional to me throughout the book—the novel wants me to root for them, but it doesn’t tell me anything about them other than the fact that they’re in love, and I didn’t really understand why I was supposed to want them to have a happy ending. Again, this might be my fault because I haven’t read the other books, but I fully believe that the chemistry of a couple should come through regardless of which book in a series a reader begins from!

I could make the same complaint about most other aspects of the plot: a lot of the backstory was simply stated without much emotional evidence to support it. Readers are supposed to believe the Prestons are an evil and abusive family who were responsible for Anna’s rape, but I don’t see Anna quaking in fear at all—she has rather civil conversations with them and at one point even tries to justify her own rapist for him, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to claims that are never substantiated. I understand it’s hard to express emotional distress, but I would have liked to see more of an attempt at it: it would make it much more believable for the readers if we could see characters’ reactions, not just know the facts.

The events in the book were also confusing to read; I didn’t understand the reason for some of the subplots in the book. (I could make the argument that this was because I didn’t read the first two books, but again—readers should be able to fully engage with the plot regardless of which book they start from.) And while we’re on the subject of plot, the storyline seemed more like a series of miniature arcs strung together than a whole and coherent plot. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, Heartaches 3 is the last book in the Heartaches trilogy and I expected it to tie up loose ends, not begin three separate arcs that were then linearly resolved.

This is getting really long, so I’ll move on to the language.

Irwing tried to add stylistic elements to the writing. Credit where credit’s due, this did give us a few gems in terms of the language—examples that come to mind include the line “Perhaps the new day would bring with it old worries”, which I did genuinely appreciate (structural parallelism! A nice turn of phrase!). However, the same linguistic stylings also gave us strange phrases: the rain is described as “sky juice” in what is otherwise an emotionally-heavy scene, and the vagina is referred to as “heated petals”, which, well, was a description I didn’t particularly enjoy.

Weird phrasing aside, a lot of the stylistic elements made the sentences harder to understand, which reduced the level of immersion for me. There were also many wrong words used throughout the book: “bidding” is confused with “biding” twice, and “nifty” is also used more than once to mean “nimble”; someone who was described as “lithe” was subsequently said to be “fat” despite these two words having completely opposite meanings. I’m sorry to have to say this, but the book didn’t feel to me like it had been professionally edited.

Despite all of the above, here is one thing I did enjoy about the book: I liked that there was representation. There are gay people in the book, there are people of colour, there are women with different body shapes, all of whom are considered desirable. The book can be said to be inclusive, which is definitely good.

Overall, I rate this book 1 out of 4 stars—the language used and the plot progression were dealbreakers for me. I wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone, personally, but if anyone does fall in love with this book, it’s going to be a hardcore romance reader. And to the readers who do want to give this a try: start with books 1 and 2 of the Heartaches trilogy first!

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Heartaches 3
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gen_g · Post by **gen_g** » 09 May 2018, 03:25

Thank you very much for your review! I would have to say that I will have to give this a miss, as it seems like the novel is neither well-written nor edited, coupled with the obvious oversights in vocabulary and lack of plot development.

NRoach · Post by **NRoach** » 09 May 2018, 04:28

Refreshing to see a review for this book that lines up with my own! I was a little bewildered to see that it got a pretty overwhelmingly positive response. I was a little kinder in my review because I thought it would probably appeal to people who read similar book, but my own personal opinion was very meh.

Faithmwangi · Post by **Faithmwangi** » 09 May 2018, 06:33

Wow..you've done some pretty good work with that review. I appreciate the insights and in some weird way I feel like I have already read the book. I have also not began this series,and I don't think I will. At least until it receives proper editing

Ginnamassa19 · Post by **Ginnamassa19** » 11 May 2018, 04:38

NRoach wrote: ↑09 May 2018, 04:28 Refreshing to see a review for this book that lines up with my own! I was a little bewildered to see that it got a pretty overwhelmingly positive response. I was a little kinder in my review because I thought it would probably appeal to people who read similar book, but my own personal opinion was very meh.

Hahaha I was pretty confused to see so many good reviews for this book as well--it didn't seem very well edited to me and I honestly didn't really enjoy it, whoops

I'm glad I'm not the only one!

Ginnamassa19 · Post by **Ginnamassa19** » 11 May 2018, 04:43

Faithmwangi wrote: ↑09 May 2018, 06:33 Wow..you've done some pretty good work with that review. I appreciate the insights and in some weird way I feel like I have already read the book. I have also not began this series,and I don't think I will. At least until it receives proper editing

Thank you!

Yeah--I understand it's tough to write and properly edit a book, but man, I didn't really enjoy it XD

Ginnamassa19 · Post by **Ginnamassa19** » 11 May 2018, 04:45

gen_g wrote: ↑09 May 2018, 03:25 Thank you very much for your review! I would have to say that I will have to give this a miss, as it seems like the novel is neither well-written nor edited, coupled with the obvious oversights in vocabulary and lack of plot development.

Thank you for commenting! XD Yeah, I didn't really enjoy this book--although based on the many good reviews out there, it seems like it's found its audience

Bianka Walter · Post by **Bianka Walter** » 13 May 2018, 06:21

This book is advertised as a stand alone book, so I don’t think it should be necessary for you to have read the first two books. The faults you found with the story I think were 100% accurate.
Thanks for the honest review. From some of the reviews I’ve read of this series, your points are spot on. Especially with Anna and her rape, the Stockholm syndrome type of behaviour she portrays is not in very good taste.
Thank you so much for your fantastic review!

Ginnamassa19 · Post by **Ginnamassa19** » 13 May 2018, 07:02

Bianka Walter wrote: ↑13 May 2018, 06:21 This book is advertised as a stand alone book, so I don’t think it should be necessary for you to have read the first two books. The faults you found with the story I think were 100% accurate.
Thanks for the honest review. From some of the reviews I’ve read of this series, your points are spot on. Especially with Anna and her rape, the Stockholm syndrome type of behaviour she portrays is not in very good taste.
Thank you so much for your fantastic review!

Thank you for your comment!

Yeah, Stockholm Syndrome is right--I found it kinda problematic that the rape was portrayed that way. And yep, I definitely won't be recommending this book to anyone, unfortunately

Libs_Books · Post by **Libs_Books** » 13 May 2018, 09:08

Great review - very comprehensive and you back up all your points with clear evidence. When you think about it, 'Romance' actually covers a pretty wide range of writing styles and plot lines. There's no accounting for tastes, I suppose.

revna01 · Post by **revna01** » 13 May 2018, 09:31

I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the read (I can certainly understand why!) Nonetheless, I appreciate the detailed review

Ginnamassa19 · Post by **Ginnamassa19** » 13 May 2018, 09:38

Libs_Books wrote: ↑13 May 2018, 09:08 Great review - very comprehensive and you back up all your points with clear evidence. When you think about it, 'Romance' actually covers a pretty wide range of writing styles and plot lines. There's no accounting for tastes, I suppose.

While it's true that romance novels do come in many shapes and forms, I couldn't accept bad writing (especially when wrong words were used!) and less-than-ideal pacing

Thank you for the comment!

Ginnamassa19 · Post by **Ginnamassa19** » 13 May 2018, 09:39

SABRADLEY wrote: ↑13 May 2018, 09:31 I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the read (I can certainly understand why!) Nonetheless, I appreciate the detailed review

Thank you for commenting! Yeah, I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone XD

Laura Ungureanu · Post by **Laura Ungureanu** » 13 May 2018, 10:21

I was looking for a review of this book. And most importantly, I was looking for a bad review, because I found good ones and they didn't convince me. Your review did convince me to not read the book. So thank you and I really enjoyed your review!

Ginnamassa19 · Post by **Ginnamassa19** » 14 May 2018, 08:56

Laura Ungureanu wrote: ↑13 May 2018, 10:21 I was looking for a review of this book. And most importantly, I was looking for a bad review, because I found good ones and they didn't convince me. Your review did convince me to not read the book. So thank you and I really enjoyed your review!

Thank you!

Yeah, I was quite confused while looking up this book as well because everyone seemed to be raving about it