Book Review: The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang

The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If I could give this book a thousand stars, I would. This book series has become one of my new comfort reads, and I would read this story over and over again. AnnaQuan might be one of my favorite characters that I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading, and I wish Helen Hoang wrote another book in this series, but I’m fine with the three. So The Heart Principle is about Anna Sun, a violinist who becomes a breakout star after the video of her playing beautifully, who’s stuck in trying to recreate that moment…but can’t. Each time she works on a piece, she stops and starts over again, hearing the wrong notes each time. Then her boyfriend, Julian, asks for them to be in an open relationship-which threw her way the hell off.

In her therapy sessions, the therapist told her that she might be autistic, in which Anna didn’t believe at first. But the more research she’s done, the more she realize that she is part of the spectrum (which is not a bad thing, though in Anna’s mind in the beginning she didn’t believe it.) When she called and told her sister about it, though…her sister shot it down (in which I hated her the moment she dismissed it.) As for the open relationship, Anna decides that she wants to have an one night stand…

…enter Quan Diep, the cousin of Michael and the brother of Khai Diep. Quan had surgery after he had cancer, and he’s also working with his cousin with MLA (Michael Larsen something, I forgot). He and Anna met on a dating site and their one night stand…two night stand…even the third one didn’t happen, and when it did, it happened in the dark. But their dates were so cute-they talked about their love of ocean documentaries and the octopus, Quan’s company with Michael, and he was there for her when she freaked out or talked through everything.

And then her dad had a heart attack and was sent to the hospital.

Anna, along with her hateful sister (I’m sorry, I really don’t like the sister) and her mother all took care of her father when he couldn’t do anything for himself, which made me think about my grandparents when things like this happen. Anna was getting tired of taking care of her father, and one time her father tried to tell her that he just couldn’t do it anymore. And the way Pricilla talked to their father reminds me of my auntie, of when she would talk to my grandmama and papa like a child…anyway, Pricilla thought it was a GOOD IDEA for them to throw their sick father a birthday party, inviting Julian and pretty much forcing Anna to play for him.

Quan did come around a couple times-once with food and the other times, and Anna was happy that he was there. Whenever Anna talked about him, it was like a light shined on her. When she told her hateful sister about the deal with LVMH, Pricilla immediately said “you know it probably never happen, right?” and that just made me mad. She didn’t know a darn thing about Michael or Quan, so she should sit down.

Then the day came of the party, and everything kinda went to hell. Julian “proposed” to Anna, without her knowing, and Quan came to see her, but sadly it wasn’t the happy times Anna thought thanks to Julian messing it up. Then when it was time to play the song, Anna started to grab her violin, but then, as she came down the stairs, she realized that she couldn’t do it, so she smashed her violin, shattering it into a million tiny pieces, and then when she learned that her sister and her mother wanted to buy her a new violin and told her to play Pricilla’s old one, Anna said no, got into an argument, and left, never speaking to them ever again. She felt so bad for what happened to Quan that she went over to apologize, and the bravery Anna did when she and Quan finally slept together with the lights on almost made me cry.

The ending was sad because the father died sadly, but at least after all the drama, it was good at the end. This book also deals with burnout, but I liked how at the end, she stepped back for a minute to do something else, instead of just working at it. This book also talks about home caring for your loved ones and doing it yourself, without no help. I was with Anna-why didn’t get the help her father needed so he could at least get better??? Because it would’ve been much better and more handled. But all in all, I really enjoyed this book and I’m sad now that this series is over.

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