Shark Heart

For Lewis and Wren, their first year of marriage is also their last. A few weeks after their wedding, Lewis receives a rare diagnosis. He's turning into a great white shark, and has less than a year left to live as a human. At first, Wren resists her husband's fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis fully transforms? 'Every page bursts with heart' Anthony Doerr, author of All The Light We Cannot SeeBut as Lewis changes, day by day, Wren begins to make peace with the inevitable. After all, this isn't the first time she's lost a loved one.An extraordinary novel of love, loss, hope and happiness, Shark Heart explores the shapes that love takes, in all its many forms, and asks us to ask ourselves: what makes us human?

Compelling, moving, lyrical., In Shark Heart, Emily Habeck doesn't shy away from the agony of goodbyes, or the torture that can accompany unexpected freedom. With an otherworldly tenderness, she reminds us that life will always demand that we give over to its momentum and adapt. The fact that these lessons are thrilling, hilarious, and effortless to read are the miracle of the book. I suspect I will ponder this book over and over; so rich with fantasy yet as frank and real as anything I've ever read, Shark Heart is a fantastical, original, and beautifully-written novel of abandonment, love, and Ovidian transformation. It explores illness, caretaking, devotion, magical thinking, and loss--and of course great white sharks--in ways that are funny, sad, and surprising. Every page bursts with heart., Shark Heart is one of those rare books that reaches right into you and reflects lived experience so exactly, and so poetically, that it feels like you're being seen. It wears its heart openly and unapologetically on its sleeve. Equal parts tenderly comedic and tragic, the book was a difficult one to read, but I'm so glad I did, A beautifully written, heart-wringing story about love and change, about moving forward-as a shark always must -and what is lost and what is gained as we do so. Habeck has an extraordinary command of her writerly instrument, crafting sentence after sentence that feel effortless and yet are eloquent and penetrating and superb. This is the highlight of my reading-year

Emily Habeck is an alumna of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts, where she received a BFA in theatre, as well as Vanderbilt Divinity School and Vanderbilt's Peabody College. She is from Ardmore, Oklahoma. Shark Heart is her first novel.