Author: C.C. Hunter
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Source: St Martin's Press via NetGalley
Goodreads
A new heart saved her life—but will it help her find out what really happened to its donor?Review by Nara
Seventeen-year-old Leah MacKenzie is heartless. An artificial heart in a backpack is keeping her alive. However, this route only offers her a few years. And with her rare blood type, a transplant isn’t likely. Living like you are dying isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But when a heart becomes available, she’s given a second chance at life. Except Leah discovers who the donor was — a boy from her school — and they’re saying he killed himself. Plagued with dreams since the transplant, she realizes she may hold the clues to what really happened.
Matt refuses to believe his twin killed himself. When Leah seeks him out, he learns they are both having similar dreams and he’s certain it means something. While unraveling the secrets of his brother’s final moments, Leah and Matt find each other, and a love they are terrified to lose. But life and even new hearts don’t come with guarantees. Who knew living, took more courage than dying?
This Heart of Mine is a haunting, poignant tale about living and dying, surviving grief, guilt, and heartache, while discovering love and hope in the midst of sadness.
This Heart of Mine was a book that wasn't really on my radar until it showed up in the NetGalley feed. I hadn't heard that C.C. Hunter was diving into contemporary novels and upon checking out Goodreads, it seemed like this book was quite highly rated among the few GR friends who had read it, so I was willing to give it a go. Unfortunately, it didn't fully meet my relatively low expectations.
I am giving it the benefit of the doubt, since I read the advanced uncorrected proof, but there were a whole ton of grammatical errors, for example switching from present to past tense quite frequently or accidentally having "she" instead of "I", that made the book a bit difficult to read. It seemed almost like the book was initially written in past 3rd person and at some point had been switched to present 1st person. That aside, I was also not a fan of the book being written in present tense- the writing felt a bit clunky.
The novel overall dragged on a bit, with most of the middle section feeling too long. However, I did really like the attention to detail that the author focused on transplantation medicine with, including what drugs need to be taken and even smaller details that showed that she had clearly done her research. There's a slight paranormal aspect to the novel where the protagonist is able to experience the memories of the donor of her heart, and I found that this was relatively well done too.
It seems that most people really enjoyed the novel, so it might just be that it wasn't right for me. I felt that the mystery aspect of the novel that was more interesting was quite overshadowed by the romance, which I wasn't hugely invested in.
It was okay
RatingsOverall: 5/10
Plot: 3/5
Romance: 3/5
Writing: 3/5
Characters: 3/5
Cover: 3/5
