My Beating Teenage Heart by C.K. Kelly Martin

My Beating Teenage Heart by C.K. Kelly Martin

Random House, September 27, 2011

Summary from Goodreads:

Ashlyn Baptiste is falling. One moment she was nothing—no memories, no self—and then suddenly, she's plummeting through a sea of stars. Is she in a coma? She doesn't remember dying, and she has no memories of the life she left behind. All she knows is that she's trapped in a consciousness without a body and she's spending every moment watching a stranger.
Breckon Cody's on the edge. He's being ripped apart by grief so intense it literally hurts to breathe. On the surface, Breckon is trying to hold it together for his family and his girlfriend, but underneath he's barely hanging on.
Even though she didn't know him in life, Ashlyn sees Breckon's pain, and she's determined to find a way help him. As her own distressing memories emerge from the darkness, she struggles to communicate with the boy who can't see her, but whose life is suddenly intertwined with hers. In alternating voices of the main characters, My Beating Teenage Heart paints a devastatingly vivid picture of both the heartbreak and the promise of teenage life—a life Ashlyn would do anything to recover and Breckon seems desperate to destroy—and will appeal to fans of Sarah Dessen, John Green, and David Levithan.

Here's my problem with this novel--we CARE about these characters, knowing that their paths will never meet in the way we want them to, that their grief isn't something that's going to magically disappear, knowing (SPOILER) that the ending of this book might not necessarily be a happy one. Still, sometimes you're just in the mood for a heart-wrenching tale, and when that time comes, My Beating Teenage Heart will fit the bill. There is sadness in this novel, to be sure, but it will leave you with such a sense of hope for the future, it's almost indescribable. If you enjoy books that explore what might happen in the great hereafter--or even in the "so-so in-between" between here and the hereafter, you'll enjoy this novel.


Borrowed book from the library.
Enjoy your reading!
Christi