Heart bones

Raw, intense emotions and the suspenseful revelation of deeply held secrets are what drive Hoover's bestsellers, and that's true of this tale which was originally self-published. After discovering the body of her addict mother, 19-year-old outsider Beyah Grim's only option is to reach out to her estranged father and ask for help. When Beyah meets his new family in a beautiful vacation home on the Texas coast, her survival instincts tell her to lie and keep the abuse she suffered back in Kentucky to herself until she leaves for college. Meanwhile, Beyah spends the summer on the beach with her naive stepsister, whom she initially judges as shallow and unrelatable. When Beyah meets Samson, another aloof outsider, she feels like he might be the only person who understands her trauma, even though he's determined to keep her at arm's length. With characters drawn together by shared abandonment issues, this angsty romantic suspenser ends with a hopeful happily-ever-after, but Hoover walks a dangerous line, risking the romanticizing of abusive relationships by making the male protagonist an emotional manipulator.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Hoover's ardent fans will be thrilled to have this now widely available "bonus" title.

Bestseller Hoover (It Starts with Us) delivers an angsty and somewhat overwrought new adult romance. After recent high school graduate Beyah Grim's neglectful mother dies of a drug overdose in their Kentucky trailer park, Beyah, in need of a place to stay for the summer before she heads off to Penn State on a volleyball scholarship, reaches out to her estranged father, Brian, but she's unprepared for her father's swanky new life in the Houston suburbs. After a hungry childhood spent fending for herself for basic necessities, Beyah doesn't want any messy emotional ties, but she soon forms a tight bond with her new stepsister, Sara, and falls for the wealthy but haunted next-door neighbor, Shawn Samson. Samson is not what he seems, however, and when the police come calling, secrets come out all around--most notably about Samson's and Beyah's tragic pasts. Hoover goes thick on the pathos, and tenderhearted readers will ache for both protagonists. Sexy, brooding Samson, especially, is just the kind of hero Hoover readers thirst for. This is sure to scratch an itch for fans of dark, soapy romance. (Jan.)

A 19-year-old Kentucky girl--the product of a one-night stand--finds her addict mother dead and ends up spending the summer in Texas with her father and his family. After a lifetime of active neglect from her mother, Beyah Grim comes home one day from her shift at McDonald's to find her dead on the sofa, needle still in her arm. All the child support money sent by her father has been spent on her mother's addictions. The system has failed her. She taught herself to use a stove at age 6 and did whatever was necessary throughout her life to make sure there was food on the table. She's vowed never to become like her mother, and volleyball is her way out--all she needs is a place to stay for two months until her full ride to Penn State begins on Aug. 3. So when she's quickly evicted from the trailer she and her mother shared, she calls her father; he books her a ticket on the earliest possible flight to Houston. When she arrives, she discovers that Alana, her father's wife of a year, has a daughter named Sara who's just a little older than Beyah and a summer house on the beach on Bolivar Peninsula, where Beyah and her father head straight from the airport. Once Beyah settles in, Sara and her boyfriend, Marcos, begin trying to set her up with their friend Samson. Pegging the guy as a rich douchebag, Beyah soon realizes there's more to him that he lets on and that despite his purported wealth he is just as damaged as her. This is the story of a summer love affair as Beyah and Samson get to know one another, sharing their darkest secrets until Samson's past catches up with him. Hoover spends a lot of time dissecting class prejudices against a gossamer backdrop of summer love that evolves to become much more. A thoughtful exploration of how poverty impacts people's choices and blurs the lines between good and bad behavior. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.