Heart Bones

A summer that was never meant to last

Heart Bones is a romance novel by Colleen Hoover. She self-published it in 2020 through her own imprint, Hoover Ink, and Atria Books reissued it in paperback in January 2023. It is a story about one summer on the Texas coast, about a young woman who has learned to expect nothing from anyone, and about a boy whose comfortable life is not what it seems.

The narrator is Beyah Grim. Her voice is guarded, blunt and often funny. She has spent her life protecting herself, and she tells the story as someone who does not believe she deserves good things. The title comes from a conversation in which Samson tells her that hearts cannot really break, because they do not have bones.

Beyah's life in Kentucky

Beyah is nineteen. She grew up in a trailer park in Kentucky with her mother, Janean, who was addicted to drugs. There was rarely food in the house and never any stability. Beyah raised herself. She worked, kept her head down and focused on one way out: volleyball.

She has earned a full athletic scholarship to Penn State. She has told almost no one. It is her secret plan to escape.

The book opens with Beyah coming home from work and finding her mother dead of an overdose. Within days, the landlord evicts her. She has a few weeks before she can move into her college dorm and no place to stay until then. Her past in town also includes an exploitative relationship with Dakota, the son of the local police chief, who paid her for sex. She has every reason to leave.

She has one option left. She calls her father.

A father she barely knows

Brian Grim left when Beyah was about two years old. He has been a distant figure in her life ever since, and he did not see what life with Janean was really like. Beyah resents him for that and for everything else. She does not even tell him at first that her mother is dead.

Brian invites her to spend the summer with him in Texas. He has remarried. His wife, Alana, is well off, and they spend summers at her beach house on the Bolivar Peninsula, a strip of coast near Galveston. Alana has a twenty-year-old daughter, Sara.

Beyah arrives with almost nothing and expects the worst. She expects Alana to look down on her and Sara to be spoiled. Neither expectation holds. Alana is kind. Sara is warm and easy to like, and she slowly becomes something like a friend, then something like a sister. Brian tries clumsily to reconnect. Beyah keeps her walls up, but they begin to crack.

The beach house is very different from the trailer park. For the first time in her life, Beyah has enough food and a safe place to sleep. The comfort makes her uneasy. She keeps waiting for it to be taken away.

Samson

On the ferry to the peninsula, a young man takes Beyah's photo. She later learns he is Samson, who lives in the beach house next door. He is a friend of Sara's boyfriend, Marcos, and he is part of the group of young people Sara spends the summer with.

Samson seems to be everything Beyah resents: rich, handsome and comfortable. Their first meeting goes badly. On the ferry he offers her twenty dollars, and she is insulted and throws the money back. The moment says a great deal about how Beyah reads money from a rich stranger, and about what she has learned to expect from men.

But Samson is not what he seems. He is quiet and watchful. He does not ask her to explain herself, and he seems to understand things about her that she has not said. He has his own reasons for keeping people at a distance.

They make an agreement. Samson says he is going to the Air Force Academy in the fall, the same time Beyah leaves for college. Neither of them wants anything beyond the summer. He also makes a promise: on the day before she leaves, he will tell her the truth about himself.

The summer

Beyah and Samson spend the summer together on the beach, in the water and in the empty spaces of the peninsula. Their romance is slow and careful, because neither of them trusts easily. They share pieces of their pasts. Beyah begins to talk about her mother and the life she escaped. Samson talks less, and Beyah notices what he leaves out.

The summer has strange moments as well. On a date at a secluded beach, a dog digs up what look like human bones behind a dune. Samson's reaction to the discovery is intense and personal, and he refuses to call the police. Beyah does not understand why. An elderly neighbor, Marjorie, becomes an important figure in their lives. Samson helps her with repairs around her house and asks nothing for it, and the two of them spend evenings on her roof.

Through Sara, Beyah also finds a social life she never had in Kentucky. There are long days in the water and nights on the beach with Sara, Marcos and their friends. Beyah does not know how to be a carefree nineteen-year-old, because she has never been one. She watches the others with a mix of envy and distrust. Slowly she learns to join in. Hoover uses these scenes to show what Beyah missed: not only money and safety, but ordinary fun and the feeling of being part of a group.

Beyah also begins to rebuild a relationship with her father. Brian learns how much she suffered while he was away. Their conversations are painful, but they are the first honest ones they have had.

Characters

• Beyah Grim: the narrator. A nineteen-year-old who survived poverty and neglect and plans to escape through a volleyball scholarship.
• Samson: the quiet boy next door, who seems wealthy and has a secret he has promised to share at the end of the summer.
• Brian Grim: Beyah's father, who left when she was young and now wants to make amends.
• Alana: Brian's wife, who welcomes Beyah into her beach house.
• Sara: Alana's daughter, who becomes Beyah's friend.
• Marcos: Sara's boyfriend and Samson's friend.
• Marjorie: an elderly neighbor on the peninsula, whom Samson helps.

Themes

Class and appearances. Beyah judges Samson by his house, his clothes and his ease. Hoover shows that wealth on the outside can hide damage on the inside, and that two people from very different worlds can share the same wounds.

Survival and self-reliance. Beyah has survived by trusting no one. The book shows the cost of that strategy: it keeps her safe, and it also keeps her alone.

Parents who fail. Both Janean and Brian failed Beyah in different ways. The novel asks whether a parent who was absent can earn a place in a child's life later.

Grief. Beyah grieves a mother who hurt her. Hoover treats that complicated grief seriously.

Secrets and trust. Samson's promise to tell the truth at the end of summer hangs over the whole book. The question is whether love built on a secret can survive its reveal.