#adgifted all thoughts and opinions are my own.

My Heart is Hurting by S.E. Reed

My Heart is Hurting was the 14th place finalist in BBNYA 2024!

About BBNYA
BBNYA is a yearly competition where book bloggers from all over the world read and score
books written by indie authors, ending with 15 finalists (16 in 2024) and one overall winner.
If you want some more information about BBNYA, check out the BBNYA Website
https://www.bbnya.com/ or take a peek over on Twitter @BBNYA_Official. BBNYA is brought
to you in association with the book blogger support group @The_WriteReads.

Book Details
Length: 180 Pages
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Age Category: Young Adult
Date Published: July 16, 2023
Amazon Link: https://a.co/d/6yyoV0s (Canada) https://a.co/d/26frbTP (USA)
https://amzn.eu/d/5t9ma1H (UK)
Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/152331826-my-heart-is-hurting
The Story Graph Link:
https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/57cec67e-2070-4d7a-a789-ca8fcef4e11a
Blurb
Jinny Buffett is lonely…
She’s never had the comfort of a white picket fence with a loving family. Her subsidized
apartment in Hollywood Florida echoes with the void of her dead Daddy, and the nights drag
long into twilight while her Mama works the block outside the Margaritaville resort.
It’s idealistic Ms. Fleming, who’s brave enough to come knocking first. She wants to see
Jinny rise up and use her ace scores to escape the wheel of poverty, convincing Jinny to
start a school book club, where she finds the friends and boyfriend she never knew she
needed.
But when her Mama spirals out of control and threatens her entire existence, it’s Jinny’s
Everglade ancestors who arrive in a mist of magic, bringing the swamp and hope with them.

Author Bio

S.E. Reed lives in the south and writes strange, haunting, real stories of people and places
along old highways.
Winner of the 2024 Florida Book Awards and the 2024 Paterson Prize for Books for Young
People.
Additionally, she’s been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won honorable mention twice in
L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Contest.
You can find her on X @writingwithreed or visit her website http://www.writingwithreed.com .

My Review I had my doubts on this one, purely as March is an emotional month for me, due to grief.  So I wasn’t sure I’d be the right person to review it. However I’m glad I did. I wasn’t always fully understanding the behaviour of the main character or her mother, but I enjoyed the nuances and the pace of the story overall. I understood how and why Jinny wanted you communicate with her father, but it wasn’t as easy to understand why that wasn’t her primary throughout the tale. Perhaps it was disjointed for me, as I’m in a huge grief trigger week? So the motives to shift from that just confused me, and if I re read it when I’m not as emotional it would make a clearer sense.