REVIEW: Heartsick By, Caitlin Sinead

Quinn is looking forward to her senior year at Poe University. She has big plans to hang out with her best friend, flirt with a certain boy genius, party at her favorite dive bar and figure out what she's going to do after graduation with her not-so-useful art major. But that's before she meets Luke, a hot townie who's moved back home to help take care of his dying sister. And it's before a weird epidemic sweeps across campus, mysteriously turning people's eyes purple.

Is it an odd side effect from a new party drug?

Is it a rogue virus developed in a campus lab?

Is it the mark of the devil?

Soon the town starts blaming the university and the student religious group becomes frighteningly aggressive in their on-campus accusations. Quinn and Luke are caught in the middle—until a tragic accident forces Luke to reveal the one part of himself he's kept carefully hidden. That he's so much more than the happy-go-lucky boy next door Quinn had believed him to be isn't a surprise…but this truth might be too dangerous for her to handle. 

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Review

This is Caitlin Sinead’s debut novel and it was definitely a good one. It took me a few chapters to really get into the story. The characters took a little while to flush out and to really figure out where the story was going. Once I did it was a very fast paced and definitely mysterious.

Quinn is our heroine and she is finishing her senior year at Poe University. One night at a party seems to change everything. Her best friend and roommate wake up with purple eyes. Soon everyone is starting to turn up with purple eyes and soon the eyes are not the only affliction from the “disease” that start to turn up. Soon the town’s people start to turn away the people with purple eyes. They don’t want diseased people roaming their streets and that is when everything starts to spiral out of control.

I am still on the fence about Quinn’s character. While she is brave and sticks up for her friends there were things that I really didn’t like about her character and her story line. Quinn was a distant character that is very very against any and all types of romance. The reason behind her resistance to romance didn’t really make sense. While she did have something in her past it didn’t seem to really fit her dislike of love. Her relationship with her love interest was sweet but they didn’t grow the way I was hoping. They never really talked about what happened to her. There really wasn’t a lot of the two of them really getting to know each other. There were things that I liked about Quinn. She was brave when everything was going on with the disease. She was willing to do anything to protect her friends.

Luke is a great love interest. He has recently moved back to town to take care of his sick sister. Luke also has a secret, and that is his job. He keeps this secret through the first half of the book. The author was great about leaving clues for the reader to figure out. Luke was brave and sweet. He was very sweet to Quinn and everything that she and has gone through. My own problem is that his past was really explored. The way he acted in a few circumstances leaves you to guess but we never really know. So in a way he was a mystery through the whole book. It made it hard to feel like we really knew him.

This book had a lot of really intriguing characters. Each character had their own voice and seemed to bring something extra to the story. The author created a great mystery surrounding Allen. I had guess from the very beginning and I loved that she was able to make it hard to guess. While I was right about a few things she created twists and turns that made it harder to guess what was going on. For a debut novel the writing was done well. There were a few shaky spots but overall it was done well.

Overall, while there were places and things I didn’t like there was a lot that I did. It was a good read. I would definitely pick up a second book if the author decides to continue with this world.