“I’m with the band.” Thoughts on The Heartbreakers

The Heartbreakers (2015)

By Ali Novak

The Heartbreakers seems like an appropriate book to read because it is a music themed book, and I am doing the 30-Day Song Challenge.

Stella dislikes the music of the boy band, The Heartbreakers. Stella’s twin sister, Cara, is in love with them and their music. As a birthday present for Cara,—their triplet sibling—Stella and Drew decided to go to a meet and greet to get The Heartbreakers to sign some of Cara’s fan merchandise. Cara really wanted to go to their concert that was in their area, but she couldn’t because she is currently sick with cancer.

While traveling to the meet and greet, Stella encounters a guy at a Starbucks store. She finds out that the guy is actually part of the band, The Heartbreakers. He is the lead singer and guitarist, Oliver Perry. Stella, Drew, and The Heartbreakers end up being in the same hotel and round-up hanging out together. Luckily, Stella and Drew were able to get their sister’s stuff autographed by the band.

While hanging out with the band, she ends up flirting with Oliver, and takes many pictures of them. Stella thought her hangout with the band was just a one time thing, but soon after, her pictures were shown to the publicist of The Heartbreakers, and she ends up working as a professional photo blogger for the band.

What attracted me to read this novel is the background story of the author who wrote it, Ali Novak. She started out writing and publishing stories onto her Wattpad site, and those slowly became popular among readers. And now, she has two books published. She is living the dream, and I admire her for that. Someday, I hope I am able to publish a book in print. I’ve written some stuff, but I haven’t shown it to anyone yet… Okay. I know I should. One day, I will. I still need a lot of readers and followers that recognize me as a decent writer and like my work on this blog first.

The Heartbreakers could be considered another cancer/illness story. I’ve been reading a lot of those kind of stories lately. For this particular novel, the story is centered on the sister of a cancer victim, Stella. Stella is incapable of following her own path because she is too worried about her sister. One could say that her sister’s illness is the roadblock that prevents Stella from pursuing her dreams. This is a pretty simple and classical storyline that has been told countless of times in YA novels.

Stella is passionate about photography and photo blogging. However, she constantly second guesses herself about whether she is good enough to be a professional. I can relate to Stella’s character in that aspect because I, too, get self-conscious about my writing. However, as a blogger/writer, I tend to ignore the criticism of readers. (Trust me, it is better that way.)

Furthermore, novels tend to allude to some great classical works. In this case, Ali Novak mentions the love lyrics of Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella. This collection of sonnets and love songs are about desire and love, and pays homage to an Italian poet, Petrarch. I thought it was cool that the book, The Heartbreakers, mentioned Astrophil and Stella because I studied it during college.

If you like reverse harem anime or manga, you will definitely enjoy this novel because the girl is surrounded by very handsome and charismatic boys.

3.5/5