Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Tarkington)

Book Reviews
Set against the backbeat of classic rock hits of the 1970s, Ed Tarkington’s pitch-perfect first novel pays tribute to music, love and growing up in small-town America. That Tarkington throws in illicit sex, a perverted cult leader and a multiple murder only enhances the novel's hypnotic grip on its readers.... This novel may be a murder mystery wrapped in the cloak of Southern Gothic charm but, at its essence, it's a novel about love. Love for the music that informed Tarkington's formative years and love for the familial and romantic relationships that can hurt as much as uplift us.
Chicago Tribune


A coming-of-age story that evolves into a whodunit with tangled roots in three families whose lives collide in 1977.... [A] well-plotted, generous inquiry into the intricacies of the human heart—especially the broken variety.... Secrets abound, imaginations run wild.
Atlanta Journal Constitution


A clear winner—a taut, engrossing, crisply written tale of loss and abiding love.
Charlotte Observer and Raleigh News & Observer


A lush mystery-within-a-coming-of-age-tale-within-a-Southern-Gothic. If a book could have an Instagram filter, Tarkington’s would be set on something called "Nostalgic."... [I]nteresting, readable and beautifully written.
NPR Books


Tarkington’s writing is talky, devoid of flash, and calls to mind a young Pat Conroy.... [P]ropulsion is its primary attribute. Not mere plot propulsion—though there’s plenty of that, especially after the corpses turn up—but emotional propulsion: Tarkington’s fidelity to period and place is matched by his fidelity to human contradictions, to the gray area between heroism and villainy in which most of us reside. The gothic elements add spice, but the protein in this assured debut—the part that sticks to your ribs—is the beautiful but ever-threatened connection between Rocky and Paul. Only Love Can Break Your Heart is a novel about brotherhood, most of all, about the delicate fortress of that bond.
Garden & Gun


(Starred review.) This heartbreakingly effective coming-of-age story about the importance of love in one’s life is replete with moments of harsh cruelty and tender love. Beautifully written, it vividly brings to life its Southern characters, landscape, and small-town claustrophobia.
Library Journal


Tarkington’s impressive first novel achieves every author’s goal: Once you start reading, you can’t stop. And as an added bonus for Neil Young fans, Tarkington’s riveting tale provides plenty of classic rock riffs, too
Booklist


Tarkington carefully lays out his elaborate storyline and sensitively depicts his troubled characters, but it all seems rather pat, right down to the After-the-Main-Events summary.... Well-written and observed, though the characters and situations are familiar from many, many previous novels.
Kirkus Reviews