A Thousand Heartbeats by Kiera Cass
Released: November 29, 2022 | Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance
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#1 New York Times bestselling author of The Selection series Kiera Cass is back with her most epic novel yet—a sweeping enemies-to-lovers standalone romance.
“Love has a sound. It sounds like a thousand heartbeats happening at the same time.”
Princess Annika has lived a life of comfort—but no amount of luxuries can change the fact that her life isn’t her own to control. The king, once her loving father, has gone cold, and Annika will soon be forced into a loveless marriage for political gain.
Miles away, small comforts are few and far between for Lennox. He has devoted his life to the Dahrainian army, hoping to one day help them reclaim the throne that was stolen from them. For Lennox, the idea of love is merely a distraction—nothing will stand in the way of fighting for his people.
But when love, against all odds, finds them both, they are bound by its call. They can’t possibly be together—but the irresistible thrum of a thousand heartbeats won’t let them stay apart.
Kiera Cass brings her signature sparkling romance to this beautiful story of star-crossed lovers and long-held secrets.
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Kiera Cass originally came up with A Thousand Heartbeats after imagining a boy and a girl trapped together in a cave who absolutely hated each other, and the idea that one of them might not make it out alive. That scene became the starting point for the entire novel, even though it takes place in the middle of the finished story.
REVIEW
⭐ ⭐ ☆ ☆ ☆
Disappointed, but not surprised. 😔
Previously, in my review of The Siren: Is Kiera Cass getting worse as time goes on?
Answer: Yes.
I honestly wanted this book to be good. I wanted this to be Kiera Cass’ return to form after her fumbling the end of The Selection series and missing the mark on The Betrothed series. But Cass’ writing has regressed so much that she’s lost all intrigue and variety. The world-building that she used to accel at have become overly generic settings that lend nothing to the story. A Thousand Heartbeats could’ve easily taken place in modern day America, Ancient Rome, or a cyberpunk future, and nothing would’ve changed.
Her characters have become uninteresting slabs of gray. The majority of them are just... there. They have no depth of their own, don’t feel real, and are often there to just spew dialogue. But even the dialogue is cringely unnatural to the point where various scenes are genuinely hard to get through, with the funeral somehow being the most awkward scene in the book. But the general narration has also taken a huge hit, Cass’ lexicon seems to have lost all variety and has become so repetitive that certain words lose meaning by the end of the book (there are other ways to convey a characters nervousness than just having them swallow).
All this combined leads to the book just being boring. It’s overly long (Kiera Cass’ longest book yet), the world is pointless, the characters are bland while also being bipolar, Annika and Lennox’s love for each other doesn’t make sense, and they have no chemistry (ironically, the book was actually more interesting before they met). The story itself is actually really solid, but the execution is what failed it.
