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Member Reviews

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the eARC.

When I say I am aching for a book that reminds me of teenage angst, pain, and the emotions that go along with it THIS is what I mean.

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Atomic Hearts is one of those books that grabs you by the collar and doesn’t let go. I felt like I was right there with Gertie; sixteen, full of secrets, trying to outrun the mess at home but dragging it along anyway. Her friendship with Cindy, the late-night vodka, the bonfire gone wrong...it all feels so raw and real. I loved how her fantasy novel became her safe place when real life got too heavy. And years later, when she tries to rewrite her truth? Ugh, my heart. If you like coming-of-age stories full of messy love, big mistakes, and the kind of storytelling that saves you, this debut is one you won’t forget.

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Achingly and hauntingly real. Every last bit of this book I could see in my mind’s eye. The people, the places and the objects were so incredibly clear I feel like this story was something I watched or happened to me. Yet, it’s not. I feel raw from having read this yet inspired, too.

Advanced reader copy provided by Ballantine and NetGalley but all opinions are my own.

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I really liked this story! In this coming of age story, Gertie spends the summer living with her dad who is struggling with addiction, all while trying to navigate the trials and tribulations of being a teenager.

This story is told in dual timelines, past and future. In the future timeline we get a glimpse at how the events of that summer shaped Gertie’s life.

The author did an amazing job tackling the issues of addiction, parental negligence, and discovering one’s own self worth. My heart broke for Gertie as she was forced to deal with very grown up issues alongside her own troubles. I loved her friendship with Cindy and her later relationship with Ciarán.

Throughout her teenage timeline, Gertie often refers to a fantasy novel she is writing and how the main character’s experiences relate to her own. I’m not sure how I felt about this part of the story. I liked the idea, but sometimes felt like it distracted from the main storyline.

Overall, I really enjoyed this story and found it to be incredibly well written.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ballantine Books for an advanced copy of this book.

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3.5 stars

I liked this book. To me, it wasn't anything special. I don't typically read contemporary fiction, but this was still a pleasant read. The stakes kept me turning the pages because I wanted to know what happened next. I enjoyed the dual timeline aspect because it had me asking questions that kept me reading. I do think it wrapped up a bit too quickly for me. Things felt like they got solved too easily considering how difficult everything else is in our main character's life. I do think Gertie was relatable and I saw myself in her a lot in the past timeline. I think this story touched on addiction and drug abuse in a different way than I am used to seeing in the reader space. It sounds weird to say that I enjoyed the fact that it wasn't necessarily a happy ending because not everything is sunshine and rainbows in real life.

Huge thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for an e-ARC of Atomic Hearts!

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From the very first page, Atomic Hearts pulled me in with its sharp, tender writing and unforgettable narrator, Gertie. Told in dual timelines—past and future—this beautifully layered story explores addiction, family, love, and friendship in a way that feels both raw and hopeful.

Gertie is the kind of character you instantly connect with. Her voice is honest and heartfelt, and I found myself rooting for her from the beginning. Cummins’ prose is captivating—emotional without being overwrought, and deeply resonant. I couldn’t stop turning the pages and completely fell in love with Gertie’s journey.

This is a powerful coming-of-age novel that will sit with you long after the final page. The emotional ending truly got me. If you loved The People We Keep or Spectacular Things, this one will speak to your heart in a similar way.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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4⭐️ I enjoyed this story of addiction, families, love and friendship. Written from a dual timeline, past, and future, it tells the story of Gertie. In the past Gertie is the struggling 16 year old child of addicts trying to find her place in the world. In the future Gertie still struggles with choices, relationships and guilt.

The characters of Gertie and her best friend Cindy were interesting and believable. Their friendship weathered the storm of secrets, betrayal, tragedy and heartbreak.

The author’s Epilogue explains that this is based on some of her life events with some changes.


Thank you NetGalley and Ballantine books for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

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A solid debut that is a coming of age that seemed a likely scenario in current times though it does take place in the past. Gertie struggles with both parents, her father an addict, who she stays with for the summer. Her mistakes and headlong dive into anything that makes her feel reminds me of my very messy 20s. The writing reminds me a bit of Allison Larkin so those that enjoyed The People We Keep will want to scoop this up.?

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“It's a choice we all make every day, staying alive-some of us realize it, and some of us don't.”

-5 stars-

WOAH
Atomic Hearts is the kind of book you know is already good before you even start reading it. It's the type of book that makes your heart in the best and worst way. Atomic Hearts is the type of book you know is going to tear you apart before reading.
Good god! This one was so good and so sad. It deals with addiction, abuse, and trauma which is so eye opening to me. This book just dealt with absolutely everything, while still being clear and concise. It has so many components.
I loved the way Megan Cummins wrote this book. It was so unique and everything I wanted. I loved the past x future writing and the first person point of view. I found Atomic Hearts a very easy and fast read to get through. But at the same time it also made me feel literally every single thing.
I really love Gertie, because of the hella strong female character presence. It just makes the story so much more impactful and more relatable for me. It just breaks my heart that some people actually have to go through this stuff.
Overall, be prepared to cry! Because Atomic Hearts is written in such a special way that the characters and plot will be sure to tug at your heartstrings.

“Because he's going to use if he's not happy, but there's no way for him to be happy when he's alone.”

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I started this one and it just didn't grab me - interesting subject but it felt like it was meandering around and I wasn't super invested in the story.

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This is a coming-of-age story of Gertie McMahon, 16, who was stuck inside an unhappy home.

This is a coming-of-age story of Gertie McMahon, 16, who was stuck inside an unhappy home.

The story had two timelines from the past to the future. Gertie tried her best to take care of herself and help her parents regardless of her difficulties. She lived through the emotional turmoil of her past to understand her present situation.

It was easy to follow with well-developed characters and the plot seemed plausible. The author did a decent job of creating a hopeless situation that sadly happens too often these days. However, I found it to be overly depressing. I just wanted to free myself from this heart-breaking place. This is a book that could resonate with other readers much better.

My thanks to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of August 5, 2025.

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Wow. What a book! I connected so deeply with this book and that doesn’t happen often. I cared for the characters and man, this book hit me where it hurt. I loved it.

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Megan Cummins’s "Atomic Hearts" is a luminous, emotionally charged debut that reads like a literary firecracker—raw, tender, and unflinchingly honest. While it carries the emotional depth of Emily Henry and the layered character study of Taylor Jenkins Reid, it charts its own path with a voice that’s both poetic and piercingly real.

Told through dual timelines—one in the immediate, volatile intensity of Gertie’s teenage summer and the other from the steadier vantage of adulthood—the novel explores what it means to grow up too soon in the shadow of addiction, neglect, and loss. But this isn’t a story of romance. It’s a story of friendship, the kind that feels cellular. It’s a story about parenting your parents. And it’s a story about survival—emotional, psychological, and physical.

Sixteen-year-old Gertie’s world is already a minefield when a literal explosion (a bonfire accident) sends her from her small Michigan town to a new life in South Dakota with her newly sober father. But sobriety is slippery, and even a change of scenery can’t protect her from betrayal, boundaryless friendships, or the grief and guilt she carries for things left unsaid back home. Interwoven throughout is a fantasy story Gertie is writing—a portal world that becomes a lifeline, an act of agency when real life offers her so little.

Cummins’s prose is intimate and elliptical, often feeling more like memoir than fiction. Her voice drops you directly into Gertie’s consciousness, where every thought is unfiltered and every emotion is close to the surface. Some readers may find this stream-of-consciousness style intense, even disorienting, but it mirrors the story’s subject matter beautifully. The writing never flinches—even when the truth is jagged.

What sets Atomic Hearts apart is its refusal to sanitize adolescence or wrap trauma in a tidy bow. The heartbreak feels earned. The hope feels hard-won. The twist in the final pages reshapes everything that came before it—not in a cheap, gimmicky way, but in a way that asks us to rethink what we know about memory, storytelling, and truth.

Final Thoughts:
Atomic Hearts is not a light read, but it’s an important one. It’s a coming-of-age novel that doesn’t just chart a girl’s growth—it excavates it. If you’re drawn to books that make you ache, gasp, reflect, and feel, this one’s for you. A stunning debut that explores the fracture points of youth and the quiet, resilient magic of rewriting your own narrative.

📚 Recommended for fans of:
Dual-timeline emotional fiction
Friendship-first stories (think My Brilliant Friend or Firefly Lane)
Coming-of-age novels with literary weight
Raw depictions of addiction and family dysfunction
Writers writing about writing

🖊️ Favorite line:
“I had to become a different, stronger person before I’d even figured out who I was in the first place.”

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A sad yet uplifting coming-of-age story written with compassion. Atomic Hearts is a powerful story about family, friendship, love and addiction. Great read! Don't miss it.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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hits hard from the first page and just does not let up until you've finished turning the final page of this book. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.

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I will jump at the mere mention of raw, real, emotional, or traumatic material, and that’s exactly how I found myself flipping through Atomic Hearts by Megan Cummins.

Atomic Hearts is a coming of age narrative about an explosive summer full of social pressure, life in the wake of loss, family dysfunction, addiction and substance abuse, tragedy, and love. From the eyes of adulthood, the main character, Gertie, reflects on the trials that shaped her that summer, detailing the extreme challenges she, her friends, and her family faced during such a pivotal, informative period of her life. Themes of addiction, escapism, bullying, love, and loss are heavily woven into the plot of Atomic Hearts.

Megan Cummins has a truly unique prose, dropping readers into Gertie’s direct consciousness, creating a sense of an autobiographical memoir rather than a fictional story. The use of this distinctive writing style harmonizes with the real, raw, achingly emotional plot in Atomic Hearts.

If you’re searching for a powerful, coming of age narrative with an unexpected twist at the end, consider giving Atomic Hearts a try.

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I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. I am a huge fan of coming of age stories and also books told in the past and future/present timeline so I knew this would be a good one. I just adored the main character Gertie and was always rooting for her. Her relationship with her best friend Cindy was so well described in this book that I could actually feel in real life the emotions between the two of them. The plot is very relatable as well in the way we are haunted by the ghosts of our past. What a fantastic story!

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“Does time make you feel safe? What about fifteen years worth of it?”

Atomic Hearts follows Gertie’s teenage years, raised by parents busy struggling with addiction and their own problems, through her adulthood. Gertie is a writer so her story is partially reflected/told through that lens.

The story moves between the past (teenage years and a summer spent mainly in Sioux Falls with her addict father) and the present (which includes some flashbacks to adult years). Gertie went through a lot that summer and the unwinding of the tale lays out both the disappointments of past relationships and the foundations for the future.

Atomic Hearts is an achingly lovely coming-of-age story, sensitively written with a sense of humor accompanying it.

“I saw different versions of myself all over the city…I extinguished them one by one, pinching them out like little candles.”

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1. “Atomic Hearts” felt relatable in some ways. Navigating life at any age with so many moving parts is hard. I really felt for the main Character throughout this story. There’s a Buddhist concept I just learned of recently which I kept thinking of while I read; “It’s already broken” or “The glass is already broken” which signifies that nothing in life is permanent, even life itself. It encourages embracing the present moments and appreciating the life we have because EVERYTHING is subject to change at some point or another.

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10 stars if I could! I loved every word of this book, which is the debut novel of Megan Cummins. I was immediately drawn in to the world of 16-year-old Gertie and her best friend Cindy, both of whom have fathers who are drug addicts. In fact, their fathers are best friends, and the reason Gertie and Cindy became acquainted. It’s an unusual angle for a friendship story, but one which delighted me.

Neither Gertie nor Cindy lives with their father. Both live with their mothers (in Michigan), although Gertie is ostensibly on her own this summer since her mother is off in Florida on a boat trip with a suitor. When an accident involving a fire and an aerosol can put Gertie in the hospital, and Gertie somewhat accidentally sleeps with Cindy’s boyfriend, it makes for a good time for Gertie to spend the summer with her father (clean at the moment) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The summer will bring its own problems, with Gertie’s father largely absent and Gertie making friends with a big messy group of kids her age.

The book is made especially interesting by its being told in two timelines, the “past” of Gertie’s summer in Sioux Falls and the “future”, 15 or so years later in New York City. The past as Gertie remembers it comes back to haunt her in the future, and she is forced to take an honest look back at the summer that changed her life. Though it’s not a thriller, the book has a twist that shocks in its final pages.

Atomic Hearts has that intangible “magic” that only my favorite reads have. It was an absolute joy to read, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to all readers.

Much thanks to NetGalley and Ballentine Books for giving me access to this e-ARC, which will publish in August 2025.

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