Heartbroken by Lisa Unger is a shattering new novel about three women on a heart-wrenching collision course. Publisher: Crown, June 2012

Long after anyone expected Kate to do anything with her life, she did. Using the journals left behind by her aunt and grandmother, she wrote a novel based on a very real generation-old love story that ended in tragedy. On the other side of town, Emily is about to set fire to her life. She’s in a dead-end job and is involved with the wrong man; she can feel herself being drawn into darkness, with horrific consequences. With nowhere to go, she finds herself on the run. Without knowing each other, and with lives that couldn’t be more different, Kate and Emily head to the same point on the map: Heart Island, an idyllic place in the middle of a lake in the Adirondacks, owned for generations by Birdie Burke’s family. The harsh and unyielding Birdie is at one with this island, which has a terrifying history all its own. She, too, has consequences to face.

Heartbroken is a tense, mesmerizing novel about the limits of dysfunctional families, of an island haunted by dark memories and restless ghosts, and of the all-too-real demons we must battle. Wonderfully suspenseful, exquisitely crafted, and written with raw, emotional power, this is Lisa Unger at her very best.

Three women. Three lives. All come together on an island where things will never be the same. Everything comes back to the choices one makes and in this emotional and suspenseful tale those choices leads to a trek both past and present with repercussions that will be long lasting. The frenzy pace of this drama quickly became a page. There were some tense moments that had my heart pounding as the story moved towards an adrenaline-charged conclusion. With a well-developed plot, a dynamic cast of characters, from the matriarch Birdie to the mysterious man, and a mesmerizing setting, this was an excellent read and I look forward to the next book by this talented author.