I love that J. Hartmann’s stories lean towards the dark. This is my second book from her and I am not disappointed. I listened to Still Beating and liked that story. So I thought I would give this one a try too and wasn’t disappointed. It was a tad long and overdrawn. Could have shaved maybe an hour or two from the overall story but that’s not enough reason to dislike it. I say if you’re not squeamish toward heartbreak, suicide, anti-social behaviors etc, give it a read. These subjects are not something to shy away from but to understand. These things happen.
**spoiler!**
It became obvious what one of the major twists was. Like, hmm when’s he going for his scheduled right heart cath with biopsy. Or the strict anti rejection drugs. No mention of any of those. And the reason he would have needed a heart transplant from ‘trauma’ is far fetched. In the real world he’d have died before they could even procure a donor heart if the injury was so bad he needed a transplant. Hearts don’t fall from the sky! Let’s say he perforated his aorta. Dead. Or punctured one of his chambers, also dead. If he’s lucky. Maybe he’d be on ECMO for a time. They would first try to surgically “fix” the trauma to his heart if they get to him in time if it’s a young, healthy, 32 yo heart without cardiac history. Not go directly to transplant.
Anyway that doesn’t take away from the whole of the story. I was just wondering how it all fit in. Because it was glaringly obvious and didn’t make sense to me.
How it was woven in as to “why” these two people were connected made sense in the end.
This was a great listen. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and a lot of them I tend to forget. They’re not memorable. I think this one and Still Beating are memorable. When you can connect with characters and you can place yourself in their shoes and they linger in your thoughts, that is great story telling.