How to Excavate a Heart

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My other issue is that this was promoted as an enemies to lovers, romcom. I’m a big fan of the enemies to lovers trope. I love when there is dislike to even hate energy between two characters that can produce its own type of chemistry that when done well makes a great love chemistry. Unfortunately, here this was not a case of enemies, it was not even really a case of dislike. I don’t want to ruin how the characters meet, as it is interesting and I liked it, but it’s not a case of bad blood, just oddity and fate playing around. There are no enemies to lovers in this romcom and I hate to say this, but this isn’t really a romcom either. Just because a romance is cute and mostly feel good, does not a romcom make. I feel like people slap this label on everything nowadays, but the “com” part actually means “comedy” and I’m sorry, but I did not laugh once during this book so where is the comedy part? It was cute and sweet, but that means it is a “holiday romance” not an “enemies to lovers romcom”. This is a book that heavily features bodies, poop, and anxiety relating to those things. If you are sensitive to those topics, please take note and care.

It also contained instances of (past) sexual assault and a controlling/abusive relationship, and that was one of the things that were well done. I am a hater of Hallmark movies. This is somewhat surprising since I do all around like the holiday season, unironically celebrate Festivus, and never fail to fall into a rut when it’s over for the year. As it turns out, the solution to my dislike for Hallmark movies is for them to star lesbians. There’s no shortage of sapphic rom-coms coming out this year that center on Hanukkah, Christmas, and/or the general month of December, and if this is the quality that all of them will be, then I welcome the seemingly sudden prominence of the sub-genre. PDF / EPUB File Name: How_to_Excavate_a_Heart_-_Jake_Maia_Arlow.pdf, How_to_Excavate_a_Heart_-_Jake_Maia_Arlow.epub The book reveals at around the 80% mark that part of the reason Shani has unresolved trauma from her break-up with her ex-girlfriend is because said ex-girlfriend sexually assaulted her. Representation of queer women who are sexually assaulted by other queer women is important because it’s a topic that’s scarcely spoken of. However, ‘How to Excavate a Heart ‘ does not deal with this issue in a mature, nuanced or sensitive manner at all. If anything, it felt little more like a means to an end, a plot point to be whipped out at the very end to excuse the main character’s bad personality and then brushed over.

How to Excavate a Heart Summary

This is my second middle grade novel, and the first one with chronically ill characters. The entire main cast is both queer and chronically ill (they all have IBD). I was diagnosed with Crohn's when I w Keep your friends close and the bathroom closer. If Shani’s trauma had been a key component of the story and her journey to dealing with her trauma was a main plot point of the book then perhaps my rating would be different. Instead, sexual assault is used in ‘How to Excavate a Heart’ as a ungraceful, forced conflict between Shani and various other characters and never gets properly discussed. Only once is the experience actually called sexual assault and, again, this happens very late into the book. The treatment of the topic in this book really made me question whether or not sensitivity readers were brought in to give notes on the representation of sexual assault. I truly cannot conceive of how this ham-fisted inclusion made it into a traditionally published novel.

Add that to the fact that I did not care for May's character at all. She seems rude and insulting to Shani and apparently to everyone else. Her relationship with her dad is sort of magically fast-forward resolved and the conflicts seem a bit artificial because literally all that is needed is communication of any kind. The primary character arc as I saw it was about Shani learning to be her own person, independent of a best friend or girlfriend, but this is glossed over in the resolution as well so I'm not sure what the takeaway was.Let me reiterate: Shani, who we’ve been told reveres the field of palaeontology and for whom this internship is a dream-come-true throws priceless artefacts in the trash… Personally, if I were her manager, I would’ve been convicted of murder after that. As someone who had a huge (huge!) palaeontology and dinosaur obsession throughout my life and who did minor studies in the field during my time at university, I could not imagine liking someone so much that I throw fossils —literal million year-old artefacts that have ground-breaking scientific potential— in the bin, even if it were an accident.