Review: My Heart Went Walking

by Sally Hanan

Rating: ⭐2/5⭐

The only man she’s ever loved is seeing her sister.

And now they have to save her together.

Sally Hanan’s sublime debut mixes the prose of Sue Monk Kidd with the dialogue of Maeve Binchy. With captivating warmth, she pulls us in to how it felt to live in Ireland’s changing culture of the ’80s, and how it often made a woman’s decisions for her.

“I can’t bear to keep walking. But you can’t keep a secret in this town unless you leave with it.

Kept apart by their love for one man, two sisters embark on their own paths towards survival, love, and understanding, until they finally meet again in the worst of circumstances. And the reality might break them all.

My Heart Went Walking is a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that sweeps from the small Irish town of Donegal to the “big smoke”; of Dublin City; a book that celebrates the pull of family and the chance of redemption. It is a novel for everyone who feels connected to the Irish approach to life—that of grit and laughter—and also for everyone who loves an overriding message of hope and restoration in all things.

Full disclosure: I didn’t much like this book.

My Heart Went Walking is a tale about a teenage girl who falls unexpectedly pregnant after a drunken bout of rolling in the ~~hay~~ grass with her lifelong BFF. Scared, she decides to run away. The boy, not even knowing he’s to be a father, falls in love with the girl’s younger sister. Then, said sister falls gravely ill, which is what ultimately ends up bringing everyone together again.

Here’s my issue with it: I felt it was too superficial. It proposed interesting, complex topics, such as teenage pregnancy, first time love and relationships, messy family dynamics, life changing and life threatening illnesses, guilt and self-doubt, etc. And therein lied the problem. This book attempted to tackle so many topics, that in the end did a poor job of properly exploring any one of them. There’s this saying in Spanish: “Quien mucho abarca, poco aprieta”, which has a half way meaning somewhere between “Jack of all trades, master of none” and “Don’t bite off more than you can chew”.

All of these plot lines also made the story very messy. There were just too many things going wrong for too many characters all at the same time. It made the story progression very jumpy. On top of that, the writing was quite inconsistent in the character’s personalities. Conversations, reactions and emotions were all over the place. Pieces of dialogue came seemingly out of nowhere from time to time, and a lot of their responses felt out of character from what I’d grown to expect from them. Not even the eye color of the male main character was consistent. We cycled through blue, brown and green within the first third of the book.

I also felt a lot of good opportunities for drama went to waste, while silly stuff was played up. The reveal of Cullen being the father should have been one of the major climaxes, it had huge potential for being emotional and heartbreaking, but the author went another route and the result was decidedly a plain lukewarm reveal. While on the topic of the baby, I’m not happy with how that was done either. Kieran felt like little more that a background prop. A plot element seldom brought to the forefront. Una largely lived her life, and freely moved around like he didn’t even exist most of the time. It didn’t seem realistic. I expected the baby to be a lot more prominent and a more central part of the story and Una’s new life.

I don’t know that the whole “Ireland’s changing culture of the ‘80s” came across all that much, but I certainly appreciated the pronunciation guide and glossary at the beginning of the book.

Ultimately, I was unsatisfied with how this book was executed and wish the ending would have been different. I feel a bittersweet ending would have fit better and been more realistic.

Spoiler (highlight to see):
This story reminded me a lot of Little Women, except worse because here both main characters were in love with each other before the misunderstanding happened and the sister swooped in. At least, in Louisa May Alcott’s novel, Jo wasn’t romantically interested in Teddy. If I were to re-write this, Una and Cullen would have had a big falling out, she would have run away and had the baby, he would have fallen madly in love with the sister, found out the baby was his, been royally hurt and pissed off and then the sister would have actually died of leukemia. Then, in their shared grief, they would have found their way back to each other. Hurt, guilt, self-loathing, angst and bittersweet moments. Not the shiny, glittery, bow-wrapped ending we got. But that’s just me.

**I received an advanced e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Netgalley and Fire Drinkers Publishing for the opportunity**