Books

‘This Heart of Mine’ is All About Heart & Moving On Together

At first glance, ‘This Heart of Mine’ by C.C. Hunter seems like any other coming of age story or high school romance. Even the first chapter is sweet and goes along the same lines of a John Hughes love story. It becomes quickly apparent that this book is nothing like what you’d expect.

Seventeen-year-old Leah MacKenzie has settled on the fact that she’s going to die. She’s got an artificial heart, a rare blood type, and almost no chance of getting another hard. She’s accepted that her death is inevitable. And instead of this making the character a sad and morose person, she’s calm and trying to make the best out of the time she has left, more for her parents than anything else.

Of course, that all changes when a boy she knows at school dies from an apparent suicide. Now she’s smacked in the face with the fact that she’s not dying and she needs to change her outlook on things. No more artificial heart, no more knowing that she won’t get the chance to survive the year, no more keeping away from her friends because the certainty she feels at her death and the pain that it would bring them is gone.

Leah gets a chance to live and it’s kind of awe-inspiring to watch her go through that change and understand that there is more out there for her and she actually has a chance to experience it. This feeling doesn’t go away once she starts having dreams about the boy who killed himself, dreams that point out that maybe it wasn’t a suicide at all.

That’s where his twin brother comes in. Matt, who Leah always found endearing and who she had a crush on before she was sequestered to her home life in fear of an infection and death, is having strange dreams. Like Leah, they lead him to believe that his brother didn’t kill himself. His anger and determination lead him to Leah and they learn how to live while seeking out the truth about what happened to his brother.

‘This Heart of Mine’ surprised me with how fleshed out Leah and Matt are. Often times when books switch back and forth between the characters, as this book does from chapter to chapter, I feel a little underwhelmed and as if the author is doing this because they have no sense of the plot so why not give us all the thoughts instead. That’s not the case with this book.

C.C. Hunter uses every single moment she has to flesh out her characters but move the story forward in a way that makes you feel invested AF in both characters. Because of this you worry about their loneliness, you worry about their families, and you worry about what plagues them at night. And that’s what we want from our characters and stories, we want to become invested and watch them grow.

And at the end of the day ‘This Heart of Mine’ is a contemporary book that redefines what it means to move on and teaches a lesson about second, third, and fourth chances: They might come at unexpected times and in unexpected ways, but they’re ours for the taking.

Leah and Matt took that chance, together.

About the Author:

C.C. HUNTER is a pseudonym for award-winning romance author Christie Craig. She is lives in Tomball, Texas, where she’s at work on her next novel. After ten books and millions of readers, C.C. Hunter’s New York Times bestselling Shadow Falls series came to an end last year.

Now with a popular paranormal young adult series behind her, Hunter decided to turn her prolific pen to a new project, a personal YA contemporary. ‘This Heart of Mine’ tells the story of a teen girl who receives a lifesaving transplant and discovers there is more to the heart keeping her alive. With Hunter’s experience as her husband waited on the transplant list, her change in genre is full of real emotion and love that can only come from the author’s heart.

‘This Heart of Mine’ is available for purchase HERE.

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