This book is a very short book and was the quickest book I have ever read. You could not put the book down, not because you loved it and you wanted to find out what happens, but because you found it very repetitive and you wanted to get another book which was more interesting. The cover is a nice bold one with things to pull you in to the book like the yellow streaks, the half eaten apple and the mysterious title Heartbeat.

This book is around about a hundred and eighty pages long, and is written in verse (poem format), which I have never seen in a book before apart from a poem book. It is about a girl called Annie. She is twelve and loves to run bare foot with her friend and running partner, Max. She hates to run in competitions but her friend, Max, loves to. She keeps being asked by the coach of the girls running side and Max if she will join, but every time they ask her she says no.

Her mum is pregnant and her beloved grandpa has dementia. The book is called Heartbeat because of the baby inside her mum (the alien baby as called in the story by her and her father). The thing relating to apples is that she is asked to draw one hundred pictures of the same apple, one picture a day, for homework set by her art teacher Miss Freely.

Annie relates drawing to running because when ever she does drawing or running she feels free. She does chores for Mrs Cobber and is saving up for a set on colouring pencils, charcoal and some pieces of nice, thick, white paper. Where as Max is saving up for a pair of running shoes for his running meets.

This is not as bad as people say but is does repeat it self quite a lot I would not recommend it unless the person I was recommending it to was under eleven.

Over all I would give this book four-and-a-half out of ten.