"Set in an isolated town founded decades ago by a charismatic cult leader, Heartbreaker is the story of a mysterious woman who abruptly disappears, and those who try to find her. At the intersection of The Handmaid's Tale and Twin Peaks, this is the wildly imaginative American debut of a prize-winning Canadian author. Why can't a woman be more than one person in a lifetime? It's been months since Billie Jean Fontaine left her bedroom, trapped alone by grief. But one night, out of the blue, she emerges and announces that she's going into town--but she never returns. In their remote northern town, which has been cut off from the world for decades, her husband and daughter undertake a frantic search for the beloved and beautiful Billie Jean. She is the only outsider ever to arrive in this strange town, sixteen years earlier. And now the residents wonder: has Billie Jean become the first person to leave, too? Told from three unforgettable perspectives--her daughter, her dog, and her mysterious friend--Heartbreaker is the electrifying portrait of a woman who has risked everything for freedom and love, and the secrets she leaves in her wake"--
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I alternated between being intrigued, feeling lost and wanting to be done with it. The world building is quite good, and if you don't read up too much about it before, then there's an interesting twist ahead for you. And I also quite liked the characters Dey created, they're dreamers and rebels and lovers, locked into a frozen bubble of a world. But there was so much jumping around in time, and characters with multiple names, that I got quite confused, obviously also due to my higher distraction rate with audiobooks. At the very end I finally connected that The Heavy's best friend was the boy's father, but I don't know if that knowledge was kept as a reveal or if I just failed at tracking those family details from earlier descriptions. Because there obviously also were certain other revelations, that clearly were set up as reveals. So in total, I'd note this one down as intriguing, but maybe not fully successful.
