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    My Heartbeat
    Unavailable
    My Heartbeat
    Unavailable
    My Heartbeat
    Audiobook3 hours

    My Heartbeat

    Written by Garret Freymann-Weyr

    Narrated by Christy Carlson Romano

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Ellen loves Link and James. Her older brother and his best friend are the only company she ever wants. She knows they fight, but she makes it a policy never to take sides. She loves her brother, the math genius and track star. She is totally, madly in love with James, his face full of long eyelashes and hidden smiles. "When you grow out of it," James teases her, "you will break my heart."

    Ellen knows she'll never outgrow it. She'll always love James just the way she'll always love Link. Then someone at school asks if Link and James might be in love with each other. A simple question.

    Link refuses to discuss it. James refuses to stay friends with a boy so full of secrets. Ellen's parents want Link to keep his secrets to himself, but Ellen wants to know who her brother really is. When is curiosity a betrayal? And if James says he loves her, isn't that just another way of saying he still loves Link?

    My Heartbeat is a fast, furious story in which a quirky triangle learns to change its shape and Ellen, at least, learns the limits of what you can ever know about whom you love.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 28, 2003
    ISBN9780807212448
    Unavailable
    My Heartbeat
    Author

    Garret Freymann-Weyr

    Garret Freymann-Weyr is the author of My Heartbeat, a Printz Honor book, as well as Stay with Me, The Kings Are Already Here, and When I Was Older. She lives in North Carolina.

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    Reviews for My Heartbeat

    4/5

    110 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      accurate depiction of complicated love.
    • 4/5
      Lovely coming of age story with a twist. Fourteen-year-old Ellen loves her brother Link and his best friend James. Link and James are very close and have a complex relationship that may or may not be true love. The working out of all this is very interesting and well-told.
    • 4/5
      I think this is about all the different kinds of love you can have in your life. Sweet and a little sad.
    • 5/5
      Ellen is a fourteen year-old who doesn't need many friends. She has all the company she needs in her older brother Link and his best friend James, with whom she is "totally madly in love". But as they enter their senior year of high school and Ellen is finally going to the same school as her two favourite people in the world, she sees how the two boys are the objects of much speculation and begins to ask questions of her own. About the nature of Link and James' relationship. About the nature of love and of whether or not you can really know somebody else and about the art of seeing.What this novel lacks in volume it makes up for in intensity. Written in the first person, Ellen is from the very beginning struggling to understand the "unwritten social laws" that remain just beyond her comprehension. She doesn't understand a lot of what is going on with her brilliant but secretive brother and James. And when she finally decides to ask the question, "Are you gay?". The result is not an answer so much as a catalyst to a watershed of events and experiences that lead to a particularly moving coming of age. I myself am struggling to put into words why this book moved me so much. Perhaps it is because on some level I identify with quiet, socially awkward Ellen. How the unwritten social laws have always seemed as mysterious as the Kabbala to me just as they are to Ellen. Maybe it is the beautiful relationship she has with her brother- their relationship is full of mutual love and respect and even admiration. But I think it might be Ellen's acute vulnerability in general but especially when it comes to her relationship with James, who loves her as much as he loves her brother. About how love is complicated and means so much more than just sex but how sex , touching, tenderness is also a big part of it.I also love how Freymann-Weyr approaches the issue of homosexuality and bisexuality- how it doesn't really matter what kind of plumbing the person has or who they are attracted to but that the other person is willing to reciprocate the love. How love is the same for everyone, no matter what their sexuality: we all just want to love and be loved back.For only 154 pages, this book packs in a lot of heady stuff. This is one of the best, most lovely, tender, heart-breaking love stories/coming of age (the two so often go hand in hand) I have ever read for young adults.
    • 4/5
      HS Romance Freymann-Weyr, G. (2002). My Heartbeat. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Fourteen-year-old Ellen knows that her brother, Link, and his best friend, James, can sometimes get into arguments. But, they always make up and get over it. Since she was twelve, Ellen has had a crush on James. One day, Ellen realizes that maybe Link and James could be more than just friends; she wonders if they might be a couple. When Ellen decides to ask them about it, Link freaks out and does not want to speak to James anymore. He is afraid that people will think that he is gay. Freymann-Weyr addresses interesting issues with each of the complex characters. James is secure with his feelings and does not care what others think. Link is afraid and confused with the feelings he has for James. Ellen is trying to understand her brother and figure out who she is in the process. The complicated, triangular romance helps Ellen realize who she is and the things that make her great.
    • 4/5
      This book is an honest, straightforward look at developing sexuality, same-sex relationships, family life, selflessness, respect and love. I would highly recommend it for teens and parents who want a straightforward respectful approach about what it means to be gay. It is a little sugar-coated with regard to the potential societal problems that may arise for gay people but overall, it is a non-judgmental look at the thoughts and feelings of young people searching for their sexuality.
    • 4/5
      Fourteen-year old Ellen is in love with her brother Link's best friend James. She struggles to come to terms with a potential love triangle that the three of them may share. This intense story of Ellen, who is from an intellectual and solidly upper-middle class New York family, had the potential to be off-putting or uninviting to less affluent readers. However, the complicated relationships are so well-drawn and fully alive with wonder and angst that the characters are believable and, most times, even likable. The language is a bit "high brow" at times, but that can be a welcome vocabulary challenge for some readers. In classrooms, this can be a book that examines various degrees of tolerance and acceptance, or lack thereof, concerning issues of gay or questioning teens. It is understandable how this engaging book was chosen as a Printz Honor Book.
    • 3/5
      My Heartbeat is A Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book and a recipient several other awards. Ellen is entering high school and finds herself in love with James, her brother Link's, best friend. However, she does question her mother and confronts James and Link about their relationship and sexuality. The story is told first person by Ellen through very pretentious vocabulary and conversations.
    • 5/5
      This book is the book I wish I'd written. It effortlessly takes the reader through one of the best and more emotionally complicated coming of age stories I've ever read. Ellen's feelings for both James and Link are honest, believable, and very age appropriate, but the boys' emotions are what makes this, as subtly as they are expressed within Ellen's narrative. My Heartbeat is an amazing book. I'd recommend it to anyone.
    • 4/5
      This was a quick listen. Ellen spends most of her free time with her brother Link and his best friend James. She loves hanging out with the two of them and being a part of their trio. She's also madly in love with James. Then one day someone asks her if Link and James are a couple and Ellen starts to realize how little she really knows Link. Her curiosity leads her on a journey to try and find out but it's hard to find out what someone doesn't know about themselves.

      I loved the friendship between the three of them but it definitely took turns toward what most of us would deem inappropriate (I don't mean inappropriate in terms of age although I suppose most people would think so, I mean inappropriate in terms of whom ended up with whom.) There was so much potential for hurt feelings and disaster but no one seemed to experience anything they couldn't survive. Even though I didn't like how the relationships evolved, listening to them evolve was definitely interesting. There were a lot of unexpected turns and everything was very much left unresolved which as a teen would have driven me nuts but now I think totally works.
    • 4/5
      A sweet book that occaaaasionally strayed into the "too precocious to be believable" but mostly stayed firmly in "honest and uncertain." (Plus, it's about an Ellen!) Reminded me a bit of Madeleine L'Engle's A Ring of Endless Light except that the complicated truth it's confronting is sexuality rather than death; I like to think the two heroines would have gotten along. One of those books I wish had been around when I was a teenager.
    • 5/5
      Ellen loves her brother Link and his best friend James more than any other two people in the world; but things get much more complicated when a girl at school asks if Link and James are a couple. Are they gay? What does gay even mean? When she decides to ask, things get even more complicated than before and Link and James no longer speak to each other. Ellen has always thought James was super cute, but is it okay to date a boy who used to date your brother? Is it okay to date a gay boy at all?This is a very well-written novel that approaches homosexuality in a real way. The boys in the story aren’t exactly sure if they are gay or not, though one has had sex with other men. Ellen is very open abut it all and asks great questions which can inspire readers to do the same in their own lives instead of simply living in fear that a loved one may be gay. The story is very touching and you can really feel Ellen grow and learn throughout the story. This is one book that is definitely worth the time to read.