Jar of Hearts #BookReview

Jennifer Hillier | pub 2018 | 311pp

Jennifer Hillier is hot or cold for me..maybe I’m like that with thrillers overall?🤔 I mostly enjoyed her Little Secrets and even more so Wonder Land, but DNF’d Things We Do In The Dark, twice. 😱🤪 At least I tried! You can’t win them all and I’m a moody, picky reader. No matter if I hate or love them, I want to connect with a story or character immediately or, Im gone. There are too many books and time is too valuable to waste being bored. Jar of Hearts is an earlier release, 2018, and even though Hillier had failed me once, I was still excited to give it a try. Im glad that I did!

Jar of Hearts is a twisty mystery thriller, told over a period of time as our main characters mature from high schoolers to adults. Calvin James is the local ‘bad boy’. On day, he meets Angela, Georgina aka ‘Geo’, and Kaiser, high schoolers playing hooky. Angela, the ‘it girl’, every squad has one, is attracted to Calvin, but gets put off when he rejects her for Geo. Geo, who in her words, never gets picked, gets excited to be chosen, over Angela no less, so this is the flame that lights the toxic explosion of a relationship between Geo and Calvin. Even though every one, especially Kaiser, who has a crush on Geo, tries to warn her away from bad boy Calvin.

One night, the young girls sneak into a college party with the boys and get wasted. That same night, Angela goes missing. She is never seen again and the friendship between Geo and Kaiser, is never the same. Fast forward 14 years and Calvin has been arrested for murdering 3 women and Angela’s remains are found in the woods in their hometown. Kaiser is now a police detective and he is determined to find out what happened to his friend Angela. Was she a victim of Calvin as well, or something more sinister?

Pros: Yes and yes! Im telling y’all 2024 is the year of toxic love connections! Lol! What we have is love triangle between Kaiser, Calvin, and Geo. But Calvin isn’t all bad and Angela and Geo aint all good – but who and where did the lines get crossed? Kaiser has got to figure that out and decide what to do with it. We are present for the uncovering of Angela’s remains and Calvin’s trial for murder, so this has elements of a legal mystery.

Cons: I think I knew who the killer was midway through, but the how and who all was involved was the interesting journey. It also never ceases to amaze we how much latitude we offer teenagers.

Overall, I enjoyed this romp and was well entertained. Hilliers bread and butter is the unreliable narrator but she does it very well. 4 stars! Good read!