“Jesse Spark has a broken heart and in a few short weeks he’ll require major surgery to repair it – which means he only has a month to accomplish two almost-impossible tasks. 1) Shoot his epic zombie movie on a shoestring budget if he has any hope of getting into film school. 2) Fall in love before this surgery lands him with a huge scar – because how will anyone ever fancy him after that?”
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Publication Date: May 1st 2023
Content Warning: homophobia, homophobic slurs, medical content
Broken Hearts & Zombie Parts is a book close to the heart of author William Hussey (he/him/his) as he has openly spoken about his own heart surgery on his social platforms, and this book opens with just that, the main character Jesse Spark discoving that he needs his own surgery on his heart in order to live a long and healthy life.
Alongside his big surgery, Jesse decides that he needs to use his time before hand to make his zombie rom com movie as he won’t be able to afterwards as well as find a boyfriend as he thinks that nobody would love him after his surgery due to the scar that he is going to be left with, which obviously isn’t true, but Jesse is a teenager who is prone to these thoughts.
This book is one that I found rather hard to put down and didn’t want to finish reading. While the relationships in this book are somewhat obvious, it doesn’t make the build up to the ending any less entertaining to read. I’m not a person who enjoys reading romance heavy books, this one was a story with just enough of it. As it is a YA book, there are only certain aspects of romance that you can include; you can’t go too far, and that is enough for me.
While each character in this book does have their own personal problems that they are facing, they are happy together for the most part, which is lovely to read for a change. In the books that I read, the characters are usually faced with something bad as I do tend to read books with a darker themes than those covered in YA reads.
One final thing that I loved about this book was the extensive amount of slasher film references. I love a slasher film, so reading somet hing where they are referenced a great deal always makes me smile.
Thank you to Usborne for the ARC!
All the love,
Jade x
Tea Stains and Book Spines 