Once upon a time, there were no two sisters whose lives were more closely entwined than Charlotte and Ellen. But everything changed when their mother died when they were teenagers. Years later, the sisters would hardly recognise each other. Charlotte married and had children, hoping that a life of normalcy would help cure the pain of the past. Ellen, unfortunately, had been left haunted and descending into a pit of despair and anxiety over her own physical ailments. When the two sisters meet again at a retreat in the Tasmanian countryside, the ghosts of their pasts are unleashed, memories rekindled, and a bond either made stronger than before or irreversibly ruined.

It was about halfway through reading this novel that I realised the double meaning of the title. There is the more obvious blending of words ‘heart’ and ‘disease’, reflecting the pervasive internal conflicts and foreboding news that looms over the story like an impending storm. However, it can also be read as ‘heart’s ease’, a correlation to the wild pansy flower, also nicknamed heartsease for its remedies in lovesickness and cardiac ailments in herbal tradition. The death of their mother has left both Charlotte and Ellen with a feeling of decay and loss, yet also a pathway towards healing and self-discovery. Their individual stories are a tender, raw, and an earnest glimpse into the complexities of grief, and the chaotic nature it has in the indefinite lengths of time or depths of pain that affect each person. Alternating between their childhood after their mother passes and the present day, Heartsease is a beautiful eulogy to the weight of loss and grief, how it shapes us, and how the memory of love clings to us in the strongest and most unexpected of way