Brenda’s Reviews > Severed Heart > Status Update

That ending 🥺🥹😭🥲😢

Just as I’m clearing my tears & composing myself…

“Zach, I’m losing my shit right now because I really want to pull you to me, to hug you. Just tell me if you—” He launches himself at me, cutting me off, & I capture him in my arms, … his grief palpable. I keep him tightly gripped, my whispers fueled by my heart…I tell him honestly. “You may think I did you a favor, but you’re saving me, Zach.”

The author has no beef writing this but couldn’t tell me what’s on Dom’s computer ….

“He left home because his dad beat him with an extension cord before he made him wrap it around his own neck . . . Jesus, man, I—”
“Tell me,” I order, chest seizing unbearably.
“Then he ordered Zach to sit tight while he went to scout the perfect spot for him to hang himself from.”

Tyler surrounds me in his comfort as I stare down at Dominic’s solid white casket

Not Tyler psychoanalyzing Delphine 👀

😱😱😱😱 Grace … the girl Tyler’s dad cheated with… Grace mom to Zach… Zach the boy Tyler eventually adopts!!!!! Whaaaat.
Tyler noticing Zach’s features 😭😭😭😭
But if this is true…. Why didn’t anyone rescue Zach sooner?!?!?!?

It’s on the silent ride back to my granddad’s that I sense the last of the shift—the true end of summer. Of our lives as we once knew them.
The end of our innocence.

“explicit sex…”

Is this in reference to the cheating trope Tyler is experiencing in chapter 8? Personally that whole scene should be a trigger warning at the beginning. Cheating tropes that becomes a catalyst for the main character to grow is not my cup of tea specially when it’s not well written. I had to out the book down.

I had to go check the warning at the beginning: contains depictions of domestic abuse; child abuse/ severe neglect; sexual abuse; self-harm; explicit language; explicit sex; acts of violence, including but not limited to mentions of murder & gun violence; references to human atrocities, including the human slave trade; terminal & mental illness; PTSD resulting from military; & PTSD resulting from abuse/neglect.