Firstly, I would like to thank the author for giving me this book as an ARC in exchange for an honest review. This is a book which is ‘like a memoir’ I guess but not exactly as its also marketed as somewhat fictional including a fictional country where the plot is set in called Dattebayo.
I gave this book 2.5|5 stars but for the functionality of GRs, I put 3|5 and I’ll give a comprehensive review as to why.
‘The Heart to Seek I’ follows a narrator known as Creerloshin from his teenage years through adulthood as he navigates his love life. With a hopeful and open heart as well as incredible luck, I would say to meet quite a number of impactful women, we go through his raw emotions, ups and downs as he falls in love, out of love, gets heart broken but never gives up. His story is with the message to never give up.
However, the book fell a little short for me and I’ll expand as to why once I talk about what I liked.
POSITIVES
1. RAW EMOTIONS: the narrator showed genuineness and wasn’t afraid to show his emotions to us as the readers, taking time to constantly reiterate his feelings. I felt the most for him after his breakup with Angel. It was so gut wrenching to see what he went through and the author showed it beautifully.
2. FAST PACED: this wasn’t a slow read where you felt like nothing was going on. Its a book thats constantly on its feet and moving which I appreciated.
NEGATIVES
1. WORLD BUILDING: This book was set in a fictional country called ‘Dattebayo’ and even has a map but besides random name drops of the capital Anbu and a couple other places on the map like Pyar, Rak, Cinta etc, the fictional country was extremely underdeveloped and hence became irrelevant. We didn’t get to learn about the culture, activities, how it looks, what they eat, how they dress, nothing. No effort whatsoever was put into the world building which made creating a fictional country irrelevant. Instead, it had so many real world elements like you mentioned English football like Liverpool, Ronaldo, Naruto, an extensive array of countries (Creerloshin studies in Australia, works in Singapore, goes to Korea amongst so many other countries), the lion king, Frozen. So i felt that all the real world references defeated the purpose of the underdeveloped fictional world and the story would have made more sense if it was set in either the USA or India instead. The fictional country was also placed in Asia where it was narrated that Asians have conservative values and it was seen in Angel’s family’s reaction to the affair. I felt at points like that, we should have better gotten the culture of the fictional country and their beliefs instead of ‘Asian culture is conservative’…again, real world interference
2. WRITING STYLE: I didn’t like the writing style. This kind of prose with zero dialogue, like diary entry style was just sooooo very hard for me to get into and it was also so rushed. Initially, the writing style just made it seem like Creerloshin was jumping from one girl to the next in his head but I think as for the prose, its just a personal preference which I frankly didn’t prefer because I felt at a point that every few pages, I was reading about a new girl without resolution to the prior one.
3. NARRATOR: I find the narrator to be unreliable. This is mostly due to the lack of dialogue forcing me to see EVERYTHING from his eyes and quite frankly, some of what he was saying, when you looked into it seemed like unnecessary criticism. He always seemed to be criticizing the women when he himself made quite questionable choices and because I wasn’t able to get the pov from the women, I couldn’t tell if some of his judgment was based on emotion or logic and I couldn’t really assume either.
4. QUESTIONABLE ACTIONS/REASONINGS: Creerloshin did some questionable things which made me raise an eyebrow and realise he wasn’t as innocent as his emotions attempted to portray. The following will be spoilers so thread carefully.
Firstly, Creerloshin emotionally cheats on Shallet with Angel. While in a relationship with Shallet, Creerloshin starts chatting with Angel online with whom he forms a deep connection with ALL WHILE IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH ANOTHER WOMAN. Before establishing new and deeper connections, Creerloshin, why don’t you end your relationship with your current girlfriend but no. He waits until he’s basically in love with Angel to break up with Shallet and I simply didn’t respect that.
Secondly, when Angel breaks up with Creerloshin, he didn’t take time out to grieve privately, instead, he called up his ex Shallet whom he had recently reconnected with to comfort him. That annoyed me so much because the whole book, he seemed to be jumping from woman to woman and now that the love of his life breaks his heart, he’s quick to cry on the shoulder of his ex?
Thirdly, Creerloshin invades the privacy of Angel by sharing the email she wrote to him breaking up with him and being vulnerable with his SISTER. That was just a complete breech of trust for me and Creerloshin fell in my eyes at this point.
Fourthly, Creerloshin claims to be madly in love with Angel but when she told him he needs to tell his family first, he completely refused. What? He was trembling at the thought of telling his father. With the level and depth of emotion he showed that he felt for her, including the fact they were together for four years, it completely baffled me that he wasn’t ready to take the proper step forward to move forward in their relationship. Eventually, he tells his mom and sister yes but his reluctance was the classic literary device example of ‘telling not showing’. The most mind boggling part in this was that Creerloshin was going to own a home with Angel all while his family (and hers) didn’t know about them. It was unrealistic.
Fifthly, he was always criticising the women. I will site some examples:
✨“when I realised that she was into someone else. I felt troubled. Her heart was with another man, but she allowed me to have feelings for her and we interacted as though we were romantically involved. Perhaps she enjoyed being the centre of attention? It dawned on me that being with her would only cause more pain, with increasing uncertainty about our relationship.”✨ -Here, I commented in my notes that, ‘you can’t assume this and I can’t take it at face value without her pov because she may have just assumed that you were her friend and it was platonic. You stated she rejected you and felt like you were forcing her to be in a relationship with you so you can’t hold her accountable for leading you on when she made it very clear and here, you’re just being harsh and all round presumptuous.’
✨”Kistal, though a fine woman, struggled to identify those who genuinely showed her attention and care. Genuine appreciation was often overlooked as people failed to recognise the value of their possessions.”✨ — Bashing of Kistal because she liked someone else instead of him. This is why I claim his pov is unreliable.
✨ “I remained silent as I acknowledged that I could have been more understanding, instead of being consumed by my own desires and thoughts.”✨— Here, I commented; finally, some character development because this seemed like the only time he was self-aware that he was at fault. Usually, he blames the other party.
✨ “She hesitated to confide in me, fearing my judgement on her incompetency.”✨ One of the only few insights into the female POV about the narrator.
✨ “She knew she was heartless and unfair to me,” — Another example of him blaming the women. Here, he blames Angel after she ends things because of her family but he played a role in this in that, he sends flowers to her family at a very, very, VERY, bad moment when she had already told him not to.
All in all, I end my review with the thoughts that its a heartfelt read that has some flaws but had very captivating moments.