Review: 'A Harvest of Hearts' by Andrea Eames
Pub. Date: 04/03/2025
Publisher: Kensington Publishing; Erewhon Books
Everyone in Foss Butcher’s village knows what happens when the magic-workers come; they harvest human hearts to use in their spells. That’s just how life in her kingdom works. But Foss, plain, clumsy, and practical as a boot, never expected anyone would want hers.
When a sorcerer snags a piece of Foss’s heart without meaning to, she is furious. For once a heart is snagged, the experience is . . . well, unpleasant. So, Foss finds herself stomping toward the grand City to keep his enchanted House and demands that he fixes her before she keels over and dies, or whatever happens when hearts are Snagged.
But the sorcerer, Sylvester, is not what she expected. Petulant, idle, and new to his powers, Sylvester has no clue how to undo the heart-taking, or how to do much of anything really, apart from sulk. Foss’s only friend is a talking cat and even the House’s walls themselves have moods.
As Foss searches for a cure, she accidentally uncovers that there is much more to the heart-taking—and to the magic-workers themselves—than she could have ever imagined. . . .
A Harvest of Hearts is marketed as being part of "the tradition of Howl's Moving Castle", and that is maybe a little too kind. (The House in the Cerulean Sea is also mentioned, but as I haven't read that one, I can't speak to its similarities.) Much of the plot of A Harvest, especially towards the beginning, follows Howl's Moving Castle pretty precisely, from stories about hearts being stolen and a magical house/castle to a protagonist who seems to have accepted her unhappy fate. It is not just the general plot elements, however, it is also the physical descriptions and some of the imagery. This is not inspired, necessarily, by Dianne Wynne Jones' novel, but rather by the Studio Ghibli film. It is in how the hair raises when magic is aswirl, the way Sylvester matches the film-Howl pretty well, and how elements from other Studio Ghibli films popped up, such as the talking cat (think Kiki's Delivery Service) and a certain witch visit (giving Spirited Away). I'm in two minds as to how I feel about it. My ARC did not have the acknowledgement section yet, so I don't know whether Eames will acknowledge the inspiration from Dianna Wynne Jones and Hayao Miyazaki. If yes, I am generally good with it. All literature, all pieces of art, are inspired by others and it is in how different works respond to one another that we can see culture develop and grow. If not, I do have an issue with it. It is not that Andrea Eames doesn't do something independent with the story material, but her novel is, in my opinion, indebted to the works of Wynne Jones and Miyazaki in a way which needs to be acknowledged.
Foss has accepted the life that she leads, disregarded by all and generally considered ugly. It is why the sorceresses visiting to collect hearts do not really bother her. They would never be interested in a heart like hers. That is, until, one day, a male sorcerer, Sylvester, comes and snags her heart. She trails after him to the capital, tracking him down, but... he does not seem to recognise her. And so she introduces herself as his housekeeper and begins looking for her heart in his enchanted House. But there is more going on than just Foss' own struggle. There are others, whose hearts have been snatched, and a strange rot seems to affect the kingdom. Can she trust Sylvester, or herself for that matter? I did enjoy the vibes of A Harvest of Hearts. It is a fun mix between cozy fairytale and fantasy with body horror elements, a balance which is hard to strike but Eames manages. I did also like the snarkiness of Foss as a main character, although I could have done with a little less emphasis on "I am so ugly no one would ever look at me". I appreciate giving Foss internal struggles to deal with, which are a consequence of how she was treated as a child, but it was repeated a little too often to not become a little trite. Sylvester is not the most fleshed-out or human of characters, but once you get deeper into the book and plot, that does sort of make sense. Something I really liked about the novel's approach was in its set up, and I'll get into that below.
This is my first read by Andrea Eames and almost from page two I was intrigued by how she was setting up this story. Foss is our narrator, she is introducing this story to us with the benefit of hindsight, and especially in the beginning, we get these little comments of "I'll get to that in a second" or "more on that later". A strong focus, at the beginning, is about the stories we tell, how we take things for granted because it is how it's always been, or it is what has always been told. It lulls us into a complacency which, I think especially in this day and age, needs to be critically assessed. Some of that focus drops away a little as Harvest gets into its plot, but it remains something of a theme throughout. Foss' POV is also an intriguing one, although she acts a little younger than I believed her to be. The world-building in general worked relatively well for me. With the novel's focus on hidden knowledge, it makes sense for Foss to find out things slowly alongside the reader, but sometimes it also felt like an easy solution. The magic system is intriguing, although some aspects remained unexplained which felt pretty crucial to me. I mentioned the mix between cozy and body horror above and I think that, considering that it is marketed as whimsical, the darkness of the novel might come as a surprise to readers. I mean, it is about hearts being taken, of people being under spells, and a main character who is a butcher, so you should really expect all of that to feature in the novel, at times explicitly. The romance is an intriguing element of the story, because Foss needs to figure out where she stands between her enchantment and her actual feelings, and this adds an interesting depth to an otherwise straightforward slow-burn. Overall, I had a lovely time with A Harvest of Hearts.
I give this novel...
3 Universes!
I struggled with my rating but settled on a 3 in the end. A Harvest of Hearts is good fun and has many aspects which readers will enjoy. For me, some of it felt a little under-developed, and in the end, I had to admit, that some of my favourite moments or aspects did feel borrowed from Wynne Jones and Miyazaki. That is not a crime, like I said, all art is inspired by other art, but it did influence my rating.
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