Where the Heart Should Be by Sarah Crossan

Our top reviewer, Sophie Nock, shares her review of this book.

This book is a masterful combination of historical fiction, tragedy and romance. Told through a series of poems, it is the story of an imagined scullery maid living in rural Ireland during the Great Famine, falling in love with the “enemy”, an English gentleman and heir to her cruel landlord, while losing her friends and family to starvation and disease. Moving and touching, through short poems about Nell’s life and loss, Crossan paints a horrifying picture of the realities of the Great Famine for Irish peasants, their treatment by the English and the fears faced daily by the masses. Filled with emotion and historical reality, this is a true poetic and literary masterpiece which left me heartbroken.