Review: My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga


Title: My Heart and Other Black Holes
Author: Jasmine Warga
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Mental Illness
Publisher: Harper Collins
Publication Date: February 10th, 2015
Pages: 133
My Rating: 4.5 Stars
Sixteen-year-old physics nerd Aysel is obsessed with plotting her own death. With a mother who can barely look at her without wincing, classmates who whisper behind her back, and a father whose violent crime rocked her small town, Aysel is ready to turn her potential energy into nothingness.

There’s only one problem: she’s not sure she has the courage to do it alone. But once she discovers a website with a section called Suicide Partners, Aysel’s convinced she’s found her solution: a teen boy with the username FrozenRobot (aka Roman) who’s haunted by a family tragedy is looking for a partner.

Even though Aysel and Roman have nothing in common, they slowly start to fill in each other’s broken lives. But as their suicide pact becomes more concrete, Aysel begins to question whether she really wants to go through with it. Ultimately, she must choose between wanting to die or trying to convince Roman to live so they can discover the potential of their energy together. Except that Roman may not be so easy to convince.


“Sometimes I wonder if my heart is a black holes - it’s so dense that there’s no room for light, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still suck me in.”

Ah, how do I write a review about this one? I read this book three days ago, and my mind still can’t form a coherent review to explain all the feelings I had while reading this book, and all the feelings that I still feel whenever I remember the book. However, after closing the book, I had an odd sense that I was supposed to read this book in that exact moment, and it was just an amazing experience. 

“We all want to believe that every day is different, that every day we change, but really, it seems that certain things are coded into us from the very beginning.”

Afraid that they wouldn’t be able to go through with their own respective suicides, Aysel and Roman made a pact to do it together on April 7th. However, as Aysel spends more time with Roman, she sees the world as she has only seen when she was a child, and more and more each day, she hesitates to go through with their agreement. The question is, will she be able to convince Roman to stay with her?

“I want to keep feeling everything. Even the painful, awful, terrible things. Because feeling things is what let’s us know that we’re alive. And I want to be alive.”

Reading this book definitely requires you to be open-minded about both depression and suicide. A big chunk of this book talks about suicide planning, and if that’s something that you cannot stomach, then you better avoid this book. However, if that theme is fine for you, then this book is an amazing book that you have to read ASAP. 

“Because loving you saved me. It’s made me see myself differently, see the world differently. I owe you everything for that.”

Oh, the feelings that this book made me feel! I just felt so connected to the main character that I still have heavy feelings whenever I think of this book. This one definitely took me on an emotional roller coaster ride. My Heart and Other Black Holes showed me that there can be unexpected happiness right around the corner; you just have to hang in there long enough to see it. 

“I wonder if that’s how darkness wins, by convincing us to trap it inside ourselves, instead of emptying it out. I don’t want it to win.”

My Heart and Other Black Holes is a book that I put off reading for a while now because of the heavy topic, but now that I've read it, I can't help but tell everyone else to read it. Even though I still can't form coherent thoughts about all the things that this book made me feel and think of, I still hope that you guys can give this book a chance. As early as this April, I am certain that this would be one of my most memorable reads of 2016. 

“I wonder if joy has a potential energy. Or if there is a potential energy that leads to joy, like a happiness serum that lingers in people’s stomachs and slowly bubbles up to create the sensation we know as happiness.”


4.5 memorable stars. 





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