Due to a few bumps in the story arc of The Faint f Heart, but particularly due to the artwork, this book is a 4.5 (rounded up to 5). This is a love story to emotions and feelings. It has realistic, science-fiction and fantasy vibes but is all too likely to happen scenario, or at least is within reason. When you play with the heart, emotions happen, and Kerilynn Wilson explores what happens when people find a way to stop feeling those emotions.
June and her journey to what is important, is a thoughtful, beautiful, and sad trip. As the only person who still has her heart (everyone else uses the technology the Scientist created to remove and numb the heart), her emotions can get in the way. But as an artist, she cannot imagine not feeling. Especially since her beloved sister, Maya, has literally thrown away all the beauty in her life away after having her heart removed. When finding an abandoned heart in a deserted, run down alley, she thinks she has found the solution to getting Maya back. Yet, when she meets Max one day, the two of them learn that there is more going on than meets the eye. And Max has secrets that are life or death.
There are mature themes, and some images, can make this not for the young or sensitive reader. However, it also has some of the most amazing illustrations I have seen in a while. They are lush, flowing, the color use (or lack of) is the piece that allows the theme to come through. The main colors used are yellow, blue and some orange-reds. They are both detailed and minimalistic. They are truly artistic and probably there to represent things as if June was telling us the story in a journal. The only way I can describe them (as the cover does not do justice to some of the ones that show emotion flowing) is they are of a bittersweet hopeful quality.