The Heart and Other Monsters

April 27, 2020
Essayist Andersen’s debut memoir is the riveting and raw story of her dysfunctional childhood and her younger sister’s 2013 death from a meth overdose. Andersen and her sister grow up in California, with an artist mother and a father with writing aspirations who cheats on his spouse, lies, and verbally abuses his family. The couple divorces when the girls are four and 10, and their mother temporarily partners with an emotionally abusive boyfriend. As they grow older, each sister becomes drawn to drugs: Andersen becomes dependent on cocaine and alcohol (she later quits both, and conquers Hodgkin’s lymphoma), but Sarah—drawn to opioids, heroin, and methadone—is unsuccessful in her attempts to get clean through rehab. Andersen is critical yet protective toward her sibling, and blames herself for not being more understanding and patient though she tries to support Sarah’s rehabilitation. After Sarah is found dead from an overdose at age 24, Andersen scours the coroner’s report and later court transcripts, delving into evidence suggesting that Sarah’s lethal dose was not accidental, but rather, administered by a man who thought she knew too much about a heinous crime he had committed
. This tragic tale of addiction will resonate deeply with readers.

May 8, 2020

Andersen creates a loving yet harrowing portrait of her younger sister Sarah, whose spiral into addiction and eventual death by overdose continues to haunt her. As with many memoirs centering on drug abuse, reading this one feels like watching a slow-motion car crash. Deception, theft, promiscuity, multiple abortions, broken promises, and false starts in rehab abound. The author also struggled with alcohol and cocaine addiction at a young age and achieved sobriety, as well as surviving Hodgkin's lymphoma. The sisters' childhood was colored by confusion and instability, with an alternately absent and emotionally manipulative father and a controlling and abusive stepfather. Andersen remains convinced that her sister may have been deliberately given a fatal dose of methamphetamine to silence her, based on what she knew about a potential murder. It matters little to the reader, as Sarah was clearly bent on self-destruction. The court case involving the murder is tacked on, with characters that lack context or meaning for the narrative. VERDICT Andersen's genuine love for her sister is compelling; many readers will relate.--Barrie Olmstead, Lewiston P.L., ID

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2020
Anderon's early disclosure in this heartbreaking memoir that she has no concrete facts that her sister didn't die of a drug overdose, but was murdered, might lead readers to believe that what follows is a true-crime investigation. Instead, what predominates is a loving portrait of Sarah, Andersen's baby sister. Sarah starts drinking around age12, having sex not long after, and trying OxyContin at 15. The prescription painkiller is too expensive, though, so Sarah quickly turns to heroin. Andersen alternates between the story of Sarah's death at 24 and the sisters' teen years, when she too was drinking and doing coke, all while lecturing Sarah about the oxy. Legitimate questions are raised about Sarah's death and the criminal elements she was cavorting with, but as noted, few are answered. The more interesting story, however, is that of Sarah and Rose; two sides of the same coin whose roles could easily have been reversed. Perfect for memoir readers who enjoyed Stephanie Wittels Wachs' Everything is Horrible and Wonderful (2018) or Maureen Cavanagh's If You Love Me (2018).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Starred review from May 1, 2020
An essayist looks back on her life and the circumstances surrounding her sister's alleged overdose at age 24. "I know what I am doing," writes Andersen in the final third of the book. "I am curating her life. I take your hand and lead you through the blood and bile this story is made of....The unbearable note of grief still sings in my head. The melody of which you will never hear." In a note to readers on the first page, we learn that the author suspects her sister, Sarah, was murdered, although she has no proof. Then Andersen leaves that idea behind, imagining her sister's death as an accidental overdose, which is what both the police and the author believed when Sarah's body was found locked in the bathroom of her boyfriend's home, her dog wailing outside the door. As Andersen describes dealing with the logistics of the death and coping with her initial experiences of loss, she revisits her childhood, her troubled parents and stepfamilies, and her experience with cancer as a teen. Her own dark interlude with drugs and alcohol in her early 20s--"My worst lies happened when I was drinking and using coke...social lies, omissions, white lies, gray lies, kind lies, terrible lies"--eventually gave way to lasting sobriety through AA. The family story unfolds in brief, elegiac chapters illustrated with black-and-white snapshots. Gradually, Andersen begins to change the narrative, slipping in news stories about a seemingly unrelated murder, which, by the end, she has causally connected to her sister's death. The revised facts are presented in a report made to the police, included near the end of the book. Combining the agonizing emotional intensity typical of narratives about losing a sibling with the memoiristic style of a murder investigation successfully complicates the reading experience. A literary grief memoir combined with a skillfully unfolded murder mystery.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.