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Hearts of Glass: Living in the Real World
Ford is a traumatized former child model. Cassie is the epitome of DIY punk with a life full of poverty and pain serving smoothies at the Orange Julius. Finally there is Jenny, a young preppy with talent and dreams held back by a society not designed for women like her.
As their lives intersect in the late 1980's at the Fox Valley Mall in Aurora, Illinois, there will be love, confusion, and dangerous adversaries with wealth and power. Ford, Cassie and Jenny just have each other. Will it be enough? How do fragile hearts of glass survive in the real world?
As their lives intersect in the late 1980's at the Fox Valley Mall in Aurora, Illinois, there will be love, confusion, and dangerous adversaries with wealth and power. Ford, Cassie and Jenny just have each other. Will it be enough? How do fragile hearts of glass survive in the real world?
283 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 18, 2025
1 person is currently reading
4 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 22, 2025
I grew up in the ‘80s and am always excited to read books that take place in a setting I remember. Hearts of Glass: Living in the Real World delivered on that nostalgia I was seeking and more. Much of the book takes place in Fox Valley Mall, which while a very real mall, stood in for me for the other malls I have known and worked at during the same years that the book takes place. This book gave me a gift in how it added to my understanding of the past. I was happy to find nostalgia here in the experiences of Ford and Cassie and Jenny, but even happier to have a greater appreciation for what it meant in those years to be vulnerable and to understand that being brave so often meant being scared. This complexity makes Hearts of Glass: Living in the Real World a book I will revisit and characters I look forward to following on their further adventures. I read this with one of my book groups, and it led to wonderful conversation: going along with Ford and Cassie and Jenny as they find community at the mall is well worth the journey!
July 8, 2025
I’m a fan of all things GenX and the 1980s. I’m a fan of real characters. I’m a fan of the mall (during my formative years). I’m a fan of Patrick Green.
Hearts of Glass ticks all of these boxes.
I wanted to ride in the Monte Carlo. I wanted to grab an Orange Julius with Ford and Cassie. I wanted to find the arcade in that mall and stay a while.
My only complaint is that I didn’t want it to end.
Green’s years behind the wheel of a cab and grabbing candid Chicagoland street photos have long required him to tell and record stories that pushed right to the heart of things. No barriers. No pretense. This novel does exactly that.
I’m looking forward to the next one!
Hearts of Glass ticks all of these boxes.
I wanted to ride in the Monte Carlo. I wanted to grab an Orange Julius with Ford and Cassie. I wanted to find the arcade in that mall and stay a while.
My only complaint is that I didn’t want it to end.
Green’s years behind the wheel of a cab and grabbing candid Chicagoland street photos have long required him to tell and record stories that pushed right to the heart of things. No barriers. No pretense. This novel does exactly that.
I’m looking forward to the next one!
June 1, 2025
I'll start off with full transparency on something: This isn't the kind of book I usually read, and I don't really fit in the primary target audience. I'm not a victim of abuse, I'm not in any way disabled, I'm not neurodiverse or LGBTQ or an angst-filled teenager. But I follow Pat Green's GenXWatch website/blog and I was very impressed by his nonfiction book from a few years ago, Night Moves, so I decided to give this one a read as well.
Green's strongest quality as a writer is in his descriptive moments, both of physical environments and of the emotional responses of characters. He uses all the right words to paint you a picture of the scene. While other authors tend to stick with sight and sound descriptors, Green lets you smell, taste, and even feel the story's locations. Often his characters' actions alone make it clear how they feel, even when they don't state it in their dialogue.
And while we're on characters, let me say that there's no stereotyping going on here. Each one of the main characters has a personality that feels real, and not like they're just a plug-and-play teen movie participant. As a reader, you truly can appreciate that they all have lives that continue beyond the confines of the scenes they appear in. That, to me, is good writing and great storytelling. (Side note: we really need an independent Tati, Deanna, Brooke, and Jenny story at some point. There's great potential there.)
You may have read elsewhere about this book being a great champion of diversity and inclusion. These are great things to have in any form of media, but there's always a concern that they'll make the story feel like the author is just preaching at you. Green's book does not feel that way. Everything that happens in this story flows naturally from the characters' own personalities. They just accept each other because that's who they are. If you walk away from this book feeling like you've been told you're not as accepting as you should be, that's not because Green pushed it on you. It's because his characters made you recognize that this is just how regular, good people behave.
Hearts of Glass: Living in the Real World is the first in a trilogy, but it isn't written with a cliffhanger ending. You know the story isn't over, sure, and you'll put down the book with a keen interest in reading more about these characters, but you also won't be cursing the fact that you have to wait for book two.
Is Hearts of Glass: Living in the Real World perfect? No, but that's to be expected from an author's very first published foray into fiction. It's an enjoyable book with great characters, a compelling plot, and a message -- a few of them, really -- and it succeeds.
Pick up a copy, give it a read, and share it with a young person who might really need it.
May 15, 2025
Reading Hearts of Glass by Pat Green was like opening a time capsule I left for myself, filled with my own memories. As someone who was the same age as the characters during the mid-to-late '80s, this novel basically transported me.
The story of Ford and Cassie felt very familiar. Their coming-of-age journey in a small Midwestern town similar to my own Ohio hometown, set to the soundtrack of Blondie, Bon Jovi, The Cure, and the buzz of the mall, captured the essence of what it meant to grow up during that era. I was reminded of what it was like to find meaning in mixtapes, to navigate the uncharted territory of first jobs, first crushes, and first heartbreaks, and to seek identity in a world that basically tried to define you before you even knew who you were.
What struck me most were the raw, honest themes: partner violence, bullying, identity, and healing, and how they were woven seamlessly into the narrative without ever feeling heavy-handed. Pat Green manages to explore these topics with grace and empathy, allowing characters like Cassie and Jenny to shine with both vulnerability and strength, like real women do. Their stories, especially Cassie’s, mirrored the complexities I saw in friends back then (and in myself).
The dialogue is sharp and real. The mall scenes, the (heart-poundingly, terrifyingly familiar) run-ins with ex-boyfriends, the heartfelt late-night Denny’s conversations (anyone in the Dayton, OH area remember The Oxymorons’ “The Diner Song”?) all hit with the emotional honesty of lived experience. While reading this book, I spent a lot of time pausing, smiling, and remembering.
Hearts of Glass is more than just nostalgia. It's a story about survival, kindness, and finding your voice, especially when it feels like no one is listening. For those of us who lived it, it feels like coming home.
The story of Ford and Cassie felt very familiar. Their coming-of-age journey in a small Midwestern town similar to my own Ohio hometown, set to the soundtrack of Blondie, Bon Jovi, The Cure, and the buzz of the mall, captured the essence of what it meant to grow up during that era. I was reminded of what it was like to find meaning in mixtapes, to navigate the uncharted territory of first jobs, first crushes, and first heartbreaks, and to seek identity in a world that basically tried to define you before you even knew who you were.
What struck me most were the raw, honest themes: partner violence, bullying, identity, and healing, and how they were woven seamlessly into the narrative without ever feeling heavy-handed. Pat Green manages to explore these topics with grace and empathy, allowing characters like Cassie and Jenny to shine with both vulnerability and strength, like real women do. Their stories, especially Cassie’s, mirrored the complexities I saw in friends back then (and in myself).
The dialogue is sharp and real. The mall scenes, the (heart-poundingly, terrifyingly familiar) run-ins with ex-boyfriends, the heartfelt late-night Denny’s conversations (anyone in the Dayton, OH area remember The Oxymorons’ “The Diner Song”?) all hit with the emotional honesty of lived experience. While reading this book, I spent a lot of time pausing, smiling, and remembering.
Hearts of Glass is more than just nostalgia. It's a story about survival, kindness, and finding your voice, especially when it feels like no one is listening. For those of us who lived it, it feels like coming home.
November 19, 2025
Easiest praise first: I'm a sucker for character, and I absolutely love the characters. I revel when Ford and Cassie and Jenny are happy, My heart breaks as they deal with struggle and pain. They have distinct and vivid voices and personalities. They feel like people I know and people I wish I'd known. I could enjoy a full story of them just talking music... but I'm glad Pat gave us more. I hate to see them hurt but I love to see them thrive.
I have an advantage many readers will not when it comes to the book. I a teenager at the same time and in roughly the same place, so when Pat writes about Fox Valley Mall or the Riverwalk it brings up vivid memories. Pat establishes a sense of place exceptionally well, but that extra bit of immersion is so much more.
The book also left me shaken. As I said, I identifies with the characters and with the setting and it took me back to that time... and how it really felt. The joy remains strong, but it also dredged up a lot of pain. My teen years weren't as dire as Ford or Cassie, but they were rough, and by the time I was done I was left to deal with this skinny kid I used to be and all the things I thought I'd put behind me.
But hey... that's what a good story can do. Make you identify when the characters, and help you identify with yourself.
I have an advantage many readers will not when it comes to the book. I a teenager at the same time and in roughly the same place, so when Pat writes about Fox Valley Mall or the Riverwalk it brings up vivid memories. Pat establishes a sense of place exceptionally well, but that extra bit of immersion is so much more.
The book also left me shaken. As I said, I identifies with the characters and with the setting and it took me back to that time... and how it really felt. The joy remains strong, but it also dredged up a lot of pain. My teen years weren't as dire as Ford or Cassie, but they were rough, and by the time I was done I was left to deal with this skinny kid I used to be and all the things I thought I'd put behind me.
But hey... that's what a good story can do. Make you identify when the characters, and help you identify with yourself.
May 19, 2025
A Powerful, Poignant Story That Took Me Back—And Broke Me Open
As a 55-year-old woman who grew up in the ’80s, i seriously FELT this book. Pat Green has captured something rare and resonant here: the raw honesty of adolescence in a time when we were expected to keep everything inside.
Set in a mall that I actually haunted as a kid, the story of Ford, Cassie, and Jenny reminded me of people I knew—friends, classmates, even myself. These weren’t the teens that they sanitize for the movies, they were real, broken, hopeful, and deeply human.
Pat Green doesn’t shy away from heavy themes like trauma, abuse, and societal pressure, but he handles them with care. As someone who’s lived long enough to know how fragile and strong a heart can be, the title couldn’t be more fitting.
I especially appreciated how the book doesn’t offer tidy endings. Life rarely does. But it does offer hope—and that’s what I held onto after the final page.
Whether you’re a Gen Xer like me or a young adult today, Hearts of Glass is a reminder that the world may not always be kind, but connection and truth can be a force of healing.
Highly recommend! The book reminded me how I felt everything so much back then.❤️
As a 55-year-old woman who grew up in the ’80s, i seriously FELT this book. Pat Green has captured something rare and resonant here: the raw honesty of adolescence in a time when we were expected to keep everything inside.
Set in a mall that I actually haunted as a kid, the story of Ford, Cassie, and Jenny reminded me of people I knew—friends, classmates, even myself. These weren’t the teens that they sanitize for the movies, they were real, broken, hopeful, and deeply human.
Pat Green doesn’t shy away from heavy themes like trauma, abuse, and societal pressure, but he handles them with care. As someone who’s lived long enough to know how fragile and strong a heart can be, the title couldn’t be more fitting.
I especially appreciated how the book doesn’t offer tidy endings. Life rarely does. But it does offer hope—and that’s what I held onto after the final page.
Whether you’re a Gen Xer like me or a young adult today, Hearts of Glass is a reminder that the world may not always be kind, but connection and truth can be a force of healing.
Highly recommend! The book reminded me how I felt everything so much back then.❤️
August 30, 2025
I got so much more out of this book than I could have imagined. I knew it would deal thoughtfully with difficult topics, but I didn’t expect that it would help me heal my own decades-old wounds or cry tears that I’ve needed to cry. It did all of that. And it effortlessly painted the complexities of the heart in a beautiful story that balanced joy and pain, page-turner action and captivating atmosphere.
I know that this writer must have struggled through something to have the clarity, authenticity, and purpose that he has in this work, and I’m so grateful to him for turning it into something that can help others heal from traumatic pasts and perhaps even avoid traumatic futures.
Also — the 80s nostalgia is spot on, but the book isn’t limited by that at all. In fact, I think the well-done generational trappings help make it an even more global story because the characters shine right through them to sneak into your heart!
I recommend this book whole-heartedly. Be prepared to be changed for the better.
I know that this writer must have struggled through something to have the clarity, authenticity, and purpose that he has in this work, and I’m so grateful to him for turning it into something that can help others heal from traumatic pasts and perhaps even avoid traumatic futures.
Also — the 80s nostalgia is spot on, but the book isn’t limited by that at all. In fact, I think the well-done generational trappings help make it an even more global story because the characters shine right through them to sneak into your heart!
I recommend this book whole-heartedly. Be prepared to be changed for the better.
October 14, 2025
Wow! This book was an amazing read! I felt like I time traveled back to my teen years. This author brings you back to the mall culture of the late 80s. He also shares trauma many of us faced (that got swept under the rug) in a way that makes you feel seen without being overly triggering. I can see later generations reading this book getting insight into the Gen X world while also feeling seen if dealing with their own trauma. Can’t wait for Book 2!
July 7, 2025
An engaging, witty, and often heartbreaking coming-of-age story that takes place in the glory days of the shopping mall. Green's combination of setting and character development deftly interrogates the ways in which nostalgia and trauma can commingle as we navigate and reflect upon life's ups and downs. This is the first book of a planned trilogy--looking forward to the next installment!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews