Artist Beatrix Adams knows exactly how she’s spending the summer before her senior year. Determined to follow in Da Vinci’s footsteps, she’s ready to tackle the one thing that will give her an advantage in a museum-sponsored scholarship contest: drawing actual cadavers. But when she tries to sneak her way into the hospital’s Willed Body program and misses the last metro train home, she meets a … boy who turns her summer plans upside down.
Jack is charming, wildly attractive . . . and possibly one of San Francisco’s most notorious graffiti artists. On midnight buses and city rooftops, Beatrix begins to see who Jack really is-and tries to uncover what he’s hiding that leaves him so wounded. But will these secrets come back to haunt him? Or will the skeletons in Beatrix’s own family’s closet tear them apart?
more
Truly a powerful story. This is a YA story of first love between two outcasts. Beatrix (Bex) has a love of drawing anatomy and is trying to get permission to sit in on the medical school anatomy classes so she can sketch the people who have given their bodies to science to be dissected. Her classmates at school had nicknamed her Mortician.
She meets Jackson (Jack) on a late bus one night and as they talk and stare at each other, he loses track of time and nearly misses his stop. When he gets up to leave a can of expensive gold spray paint falls out of his backpack. She figures out he is the graffiti artist wanted for some large gold graffiti popping up around town lately that has been in the news.
The book is full of the angst of first love, both of them are seniors in high school and have family issues. They are artists and he is a Bhuddhist. The romance between them is sweet and beautiful while some of the issues keeping them apart at first are achingly tragic and unexpected. Overall I really liked the story and recommend the book.
Really enjoyed this book!
I personally thought it was not that great… But you should definitely read this book is you are a huge teen romance book lover !!
The Anatomical Shape of a Heart has been on my TBR for ages. After seeing one of my favorite authors — one who has recommended some amazing books to me in the past — talk about her love for it on Instagram one day, I decided it was high time to read it. (Especially since she isn’t really a big YA reader.) I knew this one had to be something special. And guess what? It absolutely was.
Bex and Jack’s story was so sweet. I loved how they come to meet each other — YA has some of the best meet cutes, no? — and how things progressed with them. Something sparked when they first met each other, but the real good stuff built over time and was even tested along the way. My feelings about these two, however, were never in doubt. I shipped them so freaking hard. I loved how Jen mixed their romance with a hefty dose of coming of age and serious character growth. This book delivered the feels and the swoons and was an absolute delight.
FAVORITE QUOTES
“Feeling alive is always worth the risk.”
“Feeling alive is merely a rush of adrenaline.”
“What do I want? I want to call you every five minutes. I want to text you good night every night. I want to make you laugh. And I want you to look at me like you did that first night on the bus.”
My hands snaked around his back, and he pulled me closer. And then he was kissing me like we were both on fire and he was trying to put the flames out, and I kissed him back like an arsonist with a pocketful of matches.
I was immediately drawn in to the story of Bex and Jack. The more I read, the more I wanted to read. I wanted to know everything there was to know about these two characters and I wanted things to work out for them so badly.
Bex (which by the way, is an adorable nickname for Beatrix) is an artist and very serious minded person, which is sort of an oxymoron. Most artists are a little more fluid. This makes her character all the more interesting. That, and the subject of her artwork. I had never thought about who drew things like that before this book.
Jack is an artist in his own way and has his own personal demons he’s trying to overcome. The outlet of his artwork is more than just about him though, it’s a way of connecting to someone close to him and letting that person feel connected back to him and the world around.
The romance side of things was exciting and brings you right back to the moment of your own first love and how that felt. The rush of feelings and the fear and nerves and all of the racing emotions that go along with that. The author has perfectly captured those feelings and brought them to life on the page. The more serious aspects of the book, Bex relationship with her father, Jack’s family drama, all of that only added to the story and the emotions while reading.
When we come to the end of the story, there are things left open. We don’t see answers to some of the questions we might have, but that lets the reader imagine how some things turned out and sometimes that’s an amazing gift from the author. We get to imagine things the way we’d like them. I do wish there had been a way to actually see the final art piece that Bex made in the book. I would have loved to see how that came out.
I think readers of YA contemporary romance and realistic fiction will really enjoy this book.