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Elyse Heartwell writes emotionally grounded fiction about people who survive what should have broken them.
Her stories explore identity, loyalty, moral grey spaces, and the quiet strength it takes to rebuild a life after the world shifts beneath your feet. She is drawn to complex relationships, imperfect choices, and characters who carry both tenderness and steel.
When she’s not writing, Elyse builds creative systems, runs indie author initiatives, and disappears into art projects that usually take on a life of their own.
She believes stories don’t have to shout to leave a mark — they just have to be honest.
Reviewed by Lucinda E Clarke for Readers' Favorite
How often are mental health issues pushed under the carpet and ignored? In Breaking Perfect, Elyse Heartwell brings the pain and suffering out of the shadows and into the light. The Dawson family appears perfect on the outside, wealthy and successful, but behind closed doors, life is very different. It’s not physical or sexual abuse, but the power of words that can destroy as easily and leave longer-lasting scars. While Richard pushes Geraldine, Nina, and Joe to be outstanding and overachievers, he is eroding their sense of self-worth and their happiness. When Geraldine falls in love with Lucas, who is deemed unsuitable, her father will do anything to keep them apart.
Verbal abuse is the manipulation that is not visible to the world at large, yet can have devastating effects, as author Elyse Heartwell tells us in Breaking Perfect. Her descriptions of the despair, fear, and even terror are so realistic that the reader spirals down with Geraldine as she unsuccessfully tries to win the love of her dominant father. All the characters are real, well-drawn, and you cannot help but connect with them, except for Richard Dawson, the villain of the piece. Geraldine’s burnout is true to life: the exhaustion, the inability to think. The repetition of the demands from their father affects all his children and his wife, and they attempt to deal with it in different ways. The story illustrates how impossible it is to gain the love of a parent with their own personality disorder. A well-written, absorbing book that will give hope and clarity to those in the same scenario. Thank you, Elyse Heartwell, for writing this book and for including a content warning at the beginning.
