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Books By Moonlight
20 minutes ago
Recently, I finished the Heartstring Duet by Liv Zander, first published in April 2026, with Crown Me Dead and Crown Me Yours being released, respectively. The Heartstring Duet is one of those rare books that manages to make grief feel both intimate and heart-stopping. Liv Zander’s duology follows Elara through a world haunted by death and loss, and somehow turns those themes into something strangely beautiful. Let me tell you that I fell deeply in love with this duology. From the first chapter, I was incredibly hooked on the world of Marrowbrae and its mysterious plague that haunts the land. The way Liv Zander talks about death and grief feels like a melancholic tune, slow and gentle but at the same time fast, violent, intense, and extremely prickly.
This duology was heartbreaking but also deeply satisfying, especially in how it explores grief and death. From the beginning, Elara feels different from other main characters because death is not something unfamiliar or frightening to her. She has lived alongside it all her life, accepting it like an old friend who will eventually knock on everyone's door. Because of this, it was so interesting to watch what happens when death stops being something she understands from a distance and becomes something that hits a little closer to home.
From the early chapters, we know what Elara is willing to do to save her brother, and I found myself desperately hoping she would never have to follow through. As his illness progresses, we watch her move through denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and eventually acceptance. Her bargaining appears through the choices she makes with Vale as she desperately searches for a way to save her brother, while her anger and depression emerge as things continually fail to go according to plan. By the second book, her acceptance comes not from being okay with his death, but from realizing that there was nothing more she could have done to save him and that, in the end, she was given a little more time with her brother. She fights against something she once accepted as inevitable, makes choices driven by desperation, and allows herself to feel emotions that she might otherwise have kept at a distance. What I loved most is that Zander doesn't make acceptance mean being okay with death. Instead, it feels more like learning to live alongside something painful. Elara's journey isn't about overcoming death, but about understanding that loving someone also means accepting that you cannot keep them forever.
Secondly, the way Liv Zander develops her characters is something I loved, but Vale in particular stood out to me. From the moment he was introduced, I was intrigued by him. His humour immediately made him charming and entertaining, but as the story progressed, I began to feel that it was more than just his personality. It often felt like a way for him to hide behind something, keeping the more vulnerable parts of himself at a distance. The more we learn about his past and hidden agenda, the more those moments of humour begin to carry a different weight. It was so satisfying looking back at Vale’s earlier actions once you understood what was underneath them.
What interested me most was watching Vale slowly learn how to confront his own emotions. He spends so much of the duology guarded and seemingly in control, yet underneath that is someone who has never really allowed himself to fully feel what he has experienced. His development, especially in the second book, felt incredibly human because it wasn't sudden. We get to watch him struggle with emotions, resist them, and eventually begin to accept them. Seeing someone who had spent so much time hiding behind a made-up persona finally allow himself to be vulnerable made his emotional development one of my favourite parts of the duology. His backstory and connection to everything happening in Marrowbrae only made me more invested in him, and by the end, I felt that I understood not only who Vale was, but why he had become that person.
The Heartstring Duet is a beautiful must-read that, like its name, manages to pull at the reader's heartstrings. I was inconsolable at the end. It was like I had been left with a gaping hole the size of an ocean at my core. Ultimately, it isn't a story about learning how to defeat death. It's about learning how to live with the knowledge that everyone we love will eventually leave us, and how the people we've lost can continue to exist through the hearts of the lives they've touched.
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Recently, I finished the Heartstring Duet by Liv Zander, first published in April 2026, with Crown Me Dead and Crown Me Yours being released, respectively. The Heartstring Duet is one of those rare books that manages to make grief feel both intimate and heart-stopping. Liv Zander’s duology follows Elara through a world haunted by death and loss, and somehow turns those themes into something strangely beautiful. Let me tell you that I fell deeply in love with this duology. From the first chapter, I was incredibly hooked on the world of Marrowbrae and its mysterious plague that haunts the land. The way Liv Zander talks about death and grief feels like a melancholic tune, slow and gentle but at the same time fast, violent, intense, and extremely prickly.
This duology was heartbreaking but also deeply satisfying, especially in how it explores grief and death. From the beginning, Elara feels different from other main characters because death is not something unfamiliar or frightening to her. She has lived alongside it all her life, accepting it like an old friend who will eventually knock on everyone's door. Because of this, it was so interesting to watch what happens when death stops being something she understands from a distance and becomes something that hits a little closer to home.
From the early chapters, we know what Elara is willing to do to save her brother, and I found myself desperately hoping she would never have to follow through. As his illness progresses, we watch her move through denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and eventually acceptance. Her bargaining appears through the choices she makes with Vale as she desperately searches for a way to save her brother, while her anger and depression emerge as things continually fail to go according to plan. By the second book, her acceptance comes not from being okay with his death, but from realizing that there was nothing more she could have done to save him and that, in the end, she was given a little more time with her brother. She fights against something she once accepted as inevitable, makes choices driven by desperation, and allows herself to feel emotions that she might otherwise have kept at a distance. What I loved most is that Zander doesn't make acceptance mean being okay with death. Instead, it feels more like learning to live alongside something painful. Elara's journey isn't about overcoming death, but about understanding that loving someone also means accepting that you cannot keep them forever.
Secondly, the way Liv Zander develops her characters is something I loved, but Vale in particular stood out to me. From the moment he was introduced, I was intrigued by him. His humour immediately made him charming and entertaining, but as the story progressed, I began to feel that it was more than just his personality. It often felt like a way for him to hide behind something, keeping the more vulnerable parts of himself at a distance. The more we learn about his past and hidden agenda, the more those moments of humour begin to carry a different weight. It was so satisfying looking back at Vale’s earlier actions once you understood what was underneath them.
What interested me most was watching Vale slowly learn how to confront his own emotions. He spends so much of the duology guarded and seemingly in control, yet underneath that is someone who has never really allowed himself to fully feel what he has experienced. His development, especially in the second book, felt incredibly human because it wasn't sudden. We get to watch him struggle with emotions, resist them, and eventually begin to accept them. Seeing someone who had spent so much time hiding behind a made-up persona finally allow himself to be vulnerable made his emotional development one of my favourite parts of the duology. His backstory and connection to everything happening in Marrowbrae only made me more invested in him, and by the end, I felt that I understood not only who Vale was, but why he had become that person.
The Heartstring Duet is a beautiful must-read that, like its name, manages to pull at the reader's heartstrings. I was inconsolable at the end. It was like I had been left with a gaping hole the size of an ocean at my core. Ultimately, it isn't a story about learning how to defeat death. It's about learning how to live with the knowledge that everyone we love will eventually leave us, and how the people we've lost can continue to exist through the hearts of the lives they've touched.