de Lisa Unger
Long after anyone expected Kate to do anything with her life, she did. Using the journals left behind by her aunt and grandmother, she wrote a novel based on a very real generation-old love story that ended in tragedy. On the other side of town, Emily is about to set fire to her life. She’s in a dead-end job and is involved with the wrong man; she can feel herself being drawn into darkness, with horrific consequences. With nowhere to go, she finds herself on the run. Without knowing each other, and with lives that couldn't be more different, Kate and Emily head to the same point on the map: Heart Island, an idyllic place in the middle of a lake in the Adirondacks, owned for generations by Birdie Burke's family. The harsh and unyielding Birdie is at one with this island, which has a terrifying history all its own. She, too, has consequences to face.
Heartbroken is a tense, mesmerizing novel about the limits of dysfunctional families, of an island haunted by dark memories and restless ghosts, and of the all-too-real demons we must battle. Wonderfully suspenseful, exquisitely crafted, and written with raw, emotional power, this is Lisa Unger at her very best.
Praise for Heartbroken
“Stellar. . . . Heartbroken should be on everyone’s summer to-read list. For best results, read it alone on an island on a dark and stormy night.”—USA Today (4 stars)
“Heartbroken has all the makings of a high-wire thriller. But it’s the twisted psyches of its main characters that really unsettle. . . . Unger expertly shows how quiet betrayals can rupture a life as deeply as an act of violence.”—People (3 ½ stars)
“A can’t-put-down thriller interlaced with insightful family drama and echoes of Wuthering Heights.”—Family Circle
“Lisa Unger is one of the few women to first break into the genre of thrillers, then to dominate it.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Lisa Unger masterfully writes of the joys and frustrations of family life in her latest novel. . . . What makes [it] shine is the struggle of multidimensional characters with issues that all of us face but sometimes don’t want to acknowledge.”—Associated Press
Long after anyone expected Kate to do anything with her life, she did. Using the journals left behind by her aunt and grandmother, she wrote a novel based on a very real generation-old love story that ended in tragedy. On the other side of town, Emily is about to set fire to her life. She’s in a dead-end job and is involved with the wrong man; she can feel herself being drawn into darkness, with horrific consequences. With nowhere to go, she finds herself on the run. Without knowing each other, and with lives that couldn't be more different, Kate and Emily head to the same point on the map: Heart Island, an idyllic place in the middle of a lake in the Adirondacks, owned for generations by Birdie Burke's family. The harsh and unyielding Birdie is at one with this island, which has a terrifying history all its own. She, too, has consequences to face.
Heartbroken is a tense, mesmerizing novel about the limits of dysfunctional families, of an island haunted by dark memories and restless ghosts, and of the all-too-real demons we must battle. Wonderfully suspenseful, exquisitely crafted, and written with raw, emotional power, this is Lisa Unger at her very best.
Praise for Heartbroken
“Stellar. . . . Heartbroken should be on everyone’s summer to-read list. For best results, read it alone on an island on a dark and stormy night.”—USA Today (4 stars)
“Heartbroken has all the makings of a high-wire thriller. But it’s the twisted psyches of its main characters that really unsettle. . . . Unger expertly shows how quiet betrayals can rupture a life as deeply as an act of violence.”—People (3 ½ stars)
“A can’t-put-down thriller interlaced with insightful family drama and echoes of Wuthering Heights.”—Family Circle
“Lisa Unger is one of the few women to first break into the genre of thrillers, then to dominate it.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Lisa Unger masterfully writes of the joys and frustrations of family life in her latest novel. . . . What makes [it] shine is the struggle of multidimensional characters with issues that all of us face but sometimes don’t want to acknowledge.”—Associated Press
Critiques-
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Starred review from February 27, 2012
An island on an Adirondack lake becomes both a haven and a hell for three women in Unger’s tense psychological thriller. Kate Burke’s annual visits to Heart Island, owned by her wealthy parents, never go smoothly, mainly because of the uneasy relationship she has with her imperious 75-year-old mother, Birdie. Kate expects the next visit will be even more upsetting because she’s written a novel based on journals kept by her aunt and grandmother that’s a thinly veiled story of a love affair that ended in tragedy on the remote island. Meanwhile, Birdie has visions of a dark intruder prowling Heart Island at all hours. Finally, Emily, a waitress drifting through life, feels powerless to resist as her boyfriend pulls her into schemes that will betray the people closest to her. Unger (Die for You) skillfully builds the fissures in each of these women’s lives as she illustrates the power of the heart and the corrosive nature of lies. Agent: Elaine Markson: Markson Thoma Literary Agency. -
June 1, 2012
Unger's latest offers a triumvirate of strong women pitted against a shared past and dangerous future. Birdie Heart loves Heart Island more than anything else, and that includes her family. She's tied to the island in a way that is nearly visceral; so much so that she fought her siblings to the point of estrangement to gain ownership of it when her parents died. Now, she and her husband, Joe Burke, host an annual gathering of family on the small island that is barely touched by modern conveniences. Only this year, no one really wants to go other than her grandchildren, the son and daughter of Birdie's daughter, Kate. With her brother, Theo, bowing out, dutiful daughter Kate proceeds with plans to take the kids to the island, but last-minute complications end up with her leaving her son and husband behind and taking only daughter Chelsea and her friend, Lulu. Independent of their preparations, Emily, a waitress at the Blue Hen, waits tables and returns home to worthless boyfriend, Dean, a druggie and thief who struggles to control Emily and work as little as possible. After causing a rift between Emily and her mother, Martha, Dean and a very dangerous associate of his hatch plans to rob the Blue Hen and take Emily along for the ride. Emily, seemingly incapable of telling Dean "no," goes along with his plans and the two are caught up in a terrible sequence of events that lead them on a collision course with Birdie and the girls. Unger is a master at building characters that crackle with personality and purpose, and the women in this novel are no exception. Birdie, unhappy with everything in her life, is particularly well-drawn, but the character of Emily remains a puzzle. Unger undoubtedly meant for Emily to come across as sympathetic. Everyone who encounters her feels inexplicably sorry for her, but in the long run, she's an unlikable young woman who makes terrible life-altering choices. Unger knows how to write a taut thriller, but one improbable character keeps this book from being extraordinary.COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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March 15, 2012
Birdie Burke, a harsh, difficult woman, invites her relatives for a vacation at the family's property, Heart Island. This secluded spot in the Adirondacks is the backdrop for a tale of family intrigue and dark secrets, as the stories of three women unfold: Birdie, her daughter Kate, and the sad and confused Emily, who has been drawn into a maelstrom of crime and emotional torment through her relationship with her very troubled boyfriend. As Kate fights to cope with her mother's controlling personality, her own daughter, Chelsea, suffers from a painful lack of self-confidence and falls for a young man she knows only online. VERDICT In Unger's (Darkness, My Old Friend; Fragile) latest engrossing thriller, the author's in-depth portraits of three different women searching for answers to their own set of difficulties will captivate fans of mystery and psychological suspense. This is one of Unger's best novels yet.--Linda Oliver, MLIS, Colorado Springs
Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from March 15, 2012
Unger is back to the excellent form of her first two novels in this half family saga (part 1) and half high-adrenaline thriller (part 2). Kate, mother of two, understands just how lucky she is to have met and married Sean, a real-estate agent with a big heart and a large capacity for love. These qualities were sorely missing in her first marriage, let alone in her upbringing, led by her cold and judgmental mother, Birdie Burke. Emily is a young woman just starting out, but it seems she's destined to make bad decisions. Her boyfriend, Dean, had shown such promisehandsome, good construction job, dreams for their futurebut has since lost his job and now mixes with a bad crowd. What joins these two apparently unrelated stories is the mysterious Heart Island, a small, private enclave owned by Birdie's family for years. The island is both beloved and feared, holding wonderful memories as well as frightening ghost stories for Kate, her siblings, and even Birdie, who is so at one with the island that she refuses to leave it, even as it appears to be sucking the life out of her. Unger delivers compelling, fully drawn characters while at the same time putting the thrill in thriller. A first-class page-turner. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Unger's novels have sold more than one-million copies in the U.S. and have been translated into 21 languages; her latest, promoted heavily to librarians and book groups, will only add to those numbers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.) -
People (3 ½ stars)
"Stellar. . . . Heartbroken should be on everyone's summer to-read list. For best results, read it alone on an island on a dark and stormy night." --USA Today (4 stars) "Heartbroken has all the makings of a high-wire thriller. But it's the twisted psyches of its main characters that really unsettle. . . . Unger expertly shows how quiet betrayals can rupture a life as deeply as an act of violence."
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Tampa Bay Times
"A can't-put-down thriller interlaced with insightful family drama and echoes of Wuthering Heights." --Family Circle "Lisa Unger is one of the few women to first break into the genre of thrillers, then to dominate it." --Minneapolis Star Tribune "Lisa Unger masterfully writes of the joys and frustrations of family life in her latest novel. . . . What makes [it] shine is the struggle of multidimensional characters with issues that all of us face but sometimes don't want to acknowledge." --Associated Press "Suspenseful. . . . An intense psychological thriller that explores a family with complex relationships, destructive secrets and uneasy legacies. . . . [Unger] keeps the tension high as she delves deep into each woman's psyche, showing how the smallest decision can have far-reaching consequences." --South Florida Sun Sentinel "[An] insidious psychological thriller. Set, quite appropriately, on a claustrophobic island." --Chicago Tribune "A superb stylist. . . . [Unger] probes the psychological dimensions of her characters with tremendous empathy and acumen. . . . Readers will be haunted for a long time by this profound and heart-pounding thriller." --Florida Weekly
"[Lisa Unger is] a genuinely formidable voice in the world of dark thrillers, taking a back seat to no one. When [she] hits the ground, she does so at a full out sprint and leaves the reader breathless trying to keep up." --Examiner "Just in time to chill readers to the bone on some steamy summer night... Unger creates complex, believable family relationships, especially those between mothers and daughters, and uses those familiar scenes to anchor and contrast the creeping dread of her plot."
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Kirkus
"This page-turner is multi-layered and intriguing, as master storyteller Lisa Unger weaves a compelling plotline." --Bookreporter.com
"Unger delivers compelling, fully drawn characters while at the same time putting the thrill in thriller. A first-class page-turner." --Booklist (starred review) "[A] tense psychological thriller. . . . Unger skillfully builds the fissures of each of [her characters'] lives as she illustrates the power of the heart and the corrosive nature of lies." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Will captivate fans of mystery and psychological suspense. This is one of Unger's best novels yet." --Library Journal (starred review) "A triumvirate of strong women pitted against a shared past and dangerous future. . . . Unger knows how to write a taut thriller."
