Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Ed Tarkington
3.79
3,131 ratings 463 reviews
"Love can make people do terrible things." Welcome to Spencerville, Virginia, 1977. Eight-year-old Rocky worships his older brother, Paul. Sixteen and full of rebel cool, Paul spends his days cruising in his Chevy Nova blasting Neil Young, cigarette dangling from his lips, arm slung around his beautiful, troubled girlfriend. Paul is happy to have his younger brother as his sidekick. Then one day, in an act of vengeance against their father, Paul picks up Rocky from school and nearly abandons him in the woods. Afterward, Paul disappears. Seven years later, Rocky is a teenager himself. He hasn’t forgotten being abandoned by his boyhood hero, but he’s getting over it, with the help of the wealthy neighbors’ daughter, ten years his senior, who has taken him as her lover. Unbeknownst to both of them, their affair will set in motion a course of events that rains catastrophe on both their families. After a mysterious double murder brings terror and suspicion to their small town, Rocky and his family must reckon with the past and find out how much forgiveness their hearts can hold.
Genres: FictionHistorical FictionComing Of AgeBook ClubLiterary FictionSouthernMysteryAudiobookAdult FictionHistorical
320 Pages

Community Reviews:

5 star
690 (22%)
4 star
1335 (43%)
3 star
900 (29%)
2 star
174 (6%)
1 star
32 (1%)

Readers also enjoyed

Other books by Ed Tarkington

Lists with this book

When Breath Becomes Air
The Secret to Hummingbird Cake
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
2016 Best Books
287 books411 voters
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
When Breath Becomes Air
The Girls
Book of the Month Club Picks
190 books86 voters
The Girl on the Train
The Nightingale
Me Before You
Empire of Storms
A Court of Mist and Fury
Lady Midnight
The "Can't Wait" Books of 2016
1249 books4507 voters