Name: Nicole 's review of The Hearts We Sold by Emily Lloyd-Jones
Item: The Hearts We Sold
Rating: 5
Author: Nicole

Emily Lloyd-Jones

An intoxicating blend of fantasy, horror, and romance--a Faustian fable perfect for fans of Holly Black, and Stranger Things. Dee Moreno is out of options. Her home life sucks (to put it mildly), and she's about to get booted from her boarding school--the only place she's ever felt free--for lack of funds. But this is a world where demons exist, and the demons are there to make deals: one human body part in exchange for one wish come true. The demon who Dee approaches doesn't trade in the usual arms and legs, however. He's only interested in her heart. And what comes after Dee makes her deal is a nightmare far bigger, far more monstrous than anything she ever could have imagined. Reality is turned on its head, and Dee has only her fellow "heartless," the charming but secretive James Lancer, to keep her grounded. As something like love grows between them amid an otherworldly threat, Dee begins to wonder: Can she give James her heart when it's no longer hers to give? In The Hearts We Sold, demons can be outwitted, hearts can be reclaimed, monsters can be fought, and love isn't impossible. This book will steal your heart and break it, and leave you begging for more.

The Hearts We Sold

Julija M

A "beautifully written and elegantly characterized" blend of fantasy, horror, and romance (Booklist, starred review), perfect for fans of Holly Black and Stranger Things. Dee Moreno is out of options. Her home life sucks (to put it mildly), and she's about to get booted from her boarding school--the only place she's ever felt free--for lack of funds. But this is a world where demons exist, and the demons are there to make deals: one human body part in exchange for one wish come true. The demon who Dee approaches doesn't trade in the usual arms and legs, however. He's only interested in her heart. And what comes after Dee makes her deal is a nightmare far bigger, and far more monstrous than anything she ever could have imagined. Reality is turned on its head, and Dee has only her fellow "heartless," the charming but secretive James Lancer, to keep her grounded. As something like love grows between them amid an otherworldly ordeal, Dee begins to wonder: Can she give James her heart when it's no longer hers to give? In The Hearts We Sold, demons can be outwitted, hearts can be reclaimed, monsters can be fought, and love isn't impossible. This book will steal your heart and break it, and leave you begging for more.

Nicole 

This book is amazing! You read about Dee in a world where demons are real and will trade human body parts for anything you wish. Dee gives her heart to an odd demon and with it her whole life changes.

Sophia De La Garza

4 Stars 
Spoiler Free Review: 

Writing
- Was entertaining and fit the characters and story
-immersive and fun
 - However, at times more details would have been better. 

Characters
Dee
- enjoyed Dee's thought process about the situations she was placed in 
- a nice narrator for the story and felt like a teenager 

James 
- Enjoyed how he was humorous and serious 
-liked how we got to see the different qualities of his character throughout the entire novel 

Gremma
- was awesome and I liked how we got to see more of her as the plot continued 

Riley and Cal
- wish we got to see more of them but the time we got with them was fantastic

-enjoyed how we got a look into all the heartless' back stories, it added depth to the characters 

Plot 
- not fast paced nor slow, but worked just right for the events that took place
-action scenes could have been more elaborate and detailed but still entertaining nonetheless
- romance didn't truly occur until a little over halfway through and did feel slightly rushed 
- wanted more info based off of the demons and the voids

Overal 
- 4 out of 5 stars 
- a nice paranormal read that provides a bit of spookiness 
- recommend to people who want a different take on demon stories

Toni Turner

4.5
Hi. This was so sweet and simple and fun but also intense and dark and serious and I loved every second. 

I will say, I want more Riley. I want to know every detail about Riley. But wow did I fly through this and have fun.

laura

This book was such a fun suprise. It was such a solid standalone. I really enjoyed both the characters and the plot. I think I would have been more invested in the characters if i spent more time with them but it still made a impact on me. I loved how reality and the supernatural met and the POV of Dee. I thought the world buidling was so easy to understand and it was hard to put down. If you enjoy tv shows like Buffy or teen wolf or books like the Mortal instruments, i think you would enjoy this standalone book!

Neva Davies

This book is not one I would normally pick up on my own, but thanks to Owlcrate I got a copy! And I really enjoyed it. It's a difficult read not because of how slow it is (since it's not slow), but because of the subject matter within the book. The main character has abusive and neglecting parents (because of alcoholism) and so she gets herself, or as out of such a situation as one can when one is still in high school. The chemistry between the characters felt genuine and not rushed. I definitely recommend this.

Alice

Emily

The following is an arts review that I wrote for my journalism class, that’s why it’s so formal lol:

The Hearts We Sold by Emily Lloyd-Jones broke my heart in the best way possible. It’s an exciting story about a girl who sold her heart to a demon in order to escape her abusive household. However, this synopsis merely scratches the surface of the entire story. The protagonist, Dee, is one of four “heartless” in Portland, Oregon. Their mission, assigned by the Agathodaemon who took their hearts, is to close dangerous voids that could potentially let monsters into the world. 

The story is filled with hilarious dialogue and exhilarating action scenes. Dee and James, another one of the “heartless”, must work together to close voids and save the world.

“‘...We’ll do whatever is takes. We’re heartless,’ [said Dee.]
“James looked over the destruction, and there was a twist to his mouth when he said, ‘‘This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a’ bad pun.’”

Another great aspect about this book is the incredible representation of both people of color and people that identify themselves as LGBTQ+. For example, Dee herself is half latina and her roomate, Gremma, is lesbian. While this is already amazing representation for a young adult book which sometimes lack diversity, the strongest form of representation is displayed through the character of Riley.

Riley is a girl who joins the group of “heartless” by selling her heart because her parents didn’t support her gender identity. She is a trans woman, and eventually her and Gremma fall for each other. This is incredible representation because media rarely portrays a healthy lesbian relationship that involves a transgender woman. It is so important to normalize all types of relationships and gender identities without making that the only important trait of a character. Lloyd-Jones did this perfectly by making Riley a fully fleshed-out character who just happened to be trans; being trans was not Riley’s sole characteristic. 

Another aspect that was executed flawlessly in this book was the equal healthiness between platonic relationships and romantic relationships. Regarding platonic relationships, Gremma and Dee are a great example of a healthy girl friendship. In many young adult books, girl hate is a common trope and it is so rare to see a sister-like love through a great friendship in this genre of books. While they do have their fair share of arguments or falling out, their relationship never crosses the line of being unhealthy like in many young adult books. 

The second healthy romantic relationship from this story involves the main character and her love interest. He is very supportive of Dee and genuinely cares about her. Unfortunately, this is something that is not found in young adult books often enough. Much of the time there are tropey love triangles or unhealthy/abusive relationships thrown in to add “drama”, but it simply spreads horrible messages to any impressionable kids reading. They could start to think that that kind of relationship was normal.
Luckily, Lloyd-Jones made sure to include a very supportive and thoughtful love interest who allows for a healthy relationship to form.

Overall, I found this book to be an impactful story full of great representation. The ending was bittersweet, but not clichè, and it was the perfect end to this fantasy standalone.

Alexis 

I loved this book WAY more than i though i would. I've heard a lot of people buzzing about it and decided to borrow it from my local library. I really like the concept of this book. It kinda reminded my of Once Upon A time ( the tv show) in regards to the heart thing. I mean they are very different but just similar enough that it was a reminder. The main idea is that demons exist in our main characters world and the do deals with humans. so our main character makes a deal for something and in exchange she give him her heart. I liked the characters and the overall plot. I really enjoyed the harry potter references in it too! I also liked the ending, even though its not the ending that i wanted i feel like that helped make it different!

Madison Brown

I was not expecting the book to be THIS good. It started off slow. The story had me anticipating what would come next and I definitely did not expect that ending.

Update: it’s been 3 days and I cannot stop thinking about this book.

Sara 

Well, that was interesting. 
I'm pretty much speechless right now because I have next to no idea how to compute what I've just read. 
Because let me tell you, it was a hot mess. 
First off, this book had been sitting on my shelf for well over a year when I just recently decided to give it another shot. I couldn't ever really get into it before, but for whatever reason I managed to make it past the first chapter this time. 
At first, there wasn't anything about this book that was blanantly bad. The writing is good, but the characterization was weak. A lot of the people felt one dimensional to me because the author got so caught up in the plot and seemed to spend less time on character development. I liked how Jones talked about Dee's struggles with anxiety and worrying, but that was her whole defining personality trait. There wasn't anything else that really stuck out to me about her other than the fact that she wears skinny jeans and flip flops (??) 
I was going to give this book 3 stars, but now I'm hovering more at 2.5 because of the ending. THE ENDING of this book. It was like an info dump, and if you're planning on reading this and don't want to be spoiled, I would suggest stopping here. 

***SPOILERS****

The fact that she kills off James is bad enough, but then we find out that he has a brain tumor??? I mean WHAT is that all about? It seemed like this was put in there to make the whole thing more tragic than necessary, and of COURSE Dee ends up with his heart. I just. . .I couldn't when I read that. If I wasn't so close to the end, I probably would have been forced to put this back on my shelf and never open it again. 

**END OF SPOILERS**

Anyways, by the time I got to within the last 100 pages or so, I didn't really even care about any of the characters, which made it really difficult to finish. It was disappointing because this story could have been really good; as I said before the writing isn't bad at all and Jones discusses some very real issues and topics, but this one fell flat for me. 2.5 stars.

Julija M &
The Hearts We Sold by Emily Lloyd-Jones

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The Hearts We Sold by Emily Lloyd-Jones