Book info

• Title The Heartbreaker
• Author Susan Howatch
• Year 2003
• Genre Contemporary

Gavin Blake is riding high. He's up to his neck in money, sex and sleaze, but he's young, and handsome and he's making a lot of money. Carta Graham wants nothing more than to forget her life as a high-flying lawyer, so she's buried herself in a fund-raising project for the City Church of St Benet's. When she meets Gavin, she thinks the only thing they share is a temporary sexual attraction, but she's wrong. They are about to change each other's lives forever. For Gavin comes to see that in order to survive he must escape from the harrowing world he inhabits. His fight for freedom will be hard and fierce, but Carta, searching for her own freedom from the past, is with him every step of the way...

Thoughts

This is the story of Gavin and Carta, two completely different people living two completely different lifestyles. They meet, they become entangled in each other’s lives and that’s the relationship we follow.

Well, Carta was too absent from the book. She told you about her husband, her job, her fears, but she didn’t reveal anything, she didn’t let you inside her mind. And I think perhaps, Gavin let you too far inside so that he monopolised the story a little bit. A bit more balance would have helped.

This was the third of the three book omnibus by Howatch. The three books do make a series together but are easily read apart as well. I did like the way it kept switching between Carta’s POV and Gavin’s as that managed to keep the story interesting.

Despite my complaints, I really did like this book, it was just a little pretentious, concentrating too much on trying to be modern, maybe? I don’t know. I’m undecided whether to read the others in the series, but I did buy other books of hers to read.

Rating: 3 / 5