A Change of Heart by Sonali Dev
Released: September 27, 2016
Contemporary Romance
Kensington
Reviewed by Mandi
Blurb: Dr. Nikhil ‘Nic’ Joshi had it all—marriage, career, purpose. Until, while working for Doctors Without Borders in a Mumbai slum, his wife, Jen, discovered a black market organ transplant ring. Before she could expose the truth, Jen was killed.
Two years after the tragedy, Nic is a cruise ship doctor who spends his days treating seasickness and sunburn and his nights in a boozy haze. On one of those blurry evenings on deck, Nic meets a woman who makes a startling claim: she received Jen’s heart in a transplant and has a message for him. Nic wants to discount Jess Koirala’s story as absurd, but there’s something about her reckless desperation that resonates despite his doubts.
Jess has spent years working her way out of a nightmarish life in Calcutta and into a respectable Bollywood dance troupe. Now she faces losing the one thing that matters—her young son, Joy. She needs to uncover the secrets Jen risked everything for; but the unforeseen bond that results between her and Nic is both a lifeline and a perilous complication.
Delving beyond the surface of modern Indian-American life, acclaimed author Sonali Dev’s page-turning novel is both riveting and emotionally rewarding—an extraordinary story of human connection, bravery, and hope.
Please note: The heroine was raped seven years prior to this book starting. She relives the moment in a graphic flashback.
I’ve debated how to write this review. The short review is, I love this book – love, love, love. I want to tell you everything about it. But there is so much that happens – so much that twists around after the point I would stop setting the book up – that it doesn’t feel right to go into what exactly this story is about. If I say ‘such and such’ happens, that is not necessarily the outcome. When I started this book, I had not even read the blurb. I read it because I love this author’s voice and I didn’t care what the blurb said. I feel like that was the right choice with this one. I’m going to be vague with details of the actual plot, but I’ll dive into the good stuff.
If you read A Bollywood Bride, the previous book in this series (all three books hold up well as stand-alones) you breifly met Nikhil or Nic, and Jen. They were married in that book, but their happy ever doesn’t last long. Jen is murdered, and Nic loses the absolute love of his life. This book starts two years after her murder. They were working with Doctors Without Borders and Jen had gotten involved with the police to help with people stealing organs from an organ donation list. Jen gets involved with the bad guys, and ends up paying for it with her life. She kept this from Nic, so when he sees her murdered, it’s an unbelievably tragic time.
Our heroine Jess (not to be confused with Jen) meets Nic two years into his grief. The grief that Sonali Dev portrays in this book is some of the most intense, heartbreaking moments I have read. When I say it hurts to read it – IT HURTS TO READ IT.
He had that same desolation as the mountain town she’d grown up in. As if he had been born for beauty, as if he’d been showered with blessings, and then the tide had turned and no one knew what to do.
He leaned so far into the railing, she half expected him to let go. “Are you happy now?” he whispered into the ocean. “Is this what you wanted to see?”
No. His pain was unbearable to witness, so sharp it scraped at all the thick skin she’d grown around herself. She shook her head, knowing full well he couldn’t see her. His eyes were fixed on the turquoise waves, but she doubted he saw those either.
The vibrant blue swirled around them like an abomination, the harsh brightness highlighting the darkness trapped in their two bodies like a spotlight. Anger and pain, old and new, his and hers, pulling and pushing, multiplying against each other.
Except his pain was pure. It had dignity to it. Her own pain had been ugly, filthier than the deepest gutter.
Nic’s grief is so raw – and honestly lasts through most of the book, I wasn’t sure a new HEA with Jess would be feasible. It is – I completely bought into Nic and Jess’s love by the end of the book. But it is quite a journey. A terribly messy, angsty, emotional journey.
On top of Nic’s grief, Jess is hurting too. She is being horribly blackmailed – a man is forcing her to pretend to be someone she isn’t with Nic, so that she can find evidence related to the organ ring Jen was involved in. If she doesn’t go through with what this man planned for her, he will harm or even kill her son. Her son is what keeps Jess going, so she finds Nic, pretends to be someone, and during all of this, falls in love.
Jess was raped when she was seventeen, by two men, and the horror of that day plays out in her mind constantly. She is still very broken from it and it makes initially being in Nic’s presence difficult. Nic is not a gentle man – he lashes out often due to his torment. But Nic is also a fixer. When he sees pain in Jess, it’s in his nature to want to make it better. Jess tries so hard to mask her pain, and Nic can’t help but let his pain leak out all over the place. Together they walk this horribly messy path together and find each other at the end. Nic’s family (who you meet in the previous book) play a big part. There is also a definite suspense part that plays out with nasty men.
I know some people don’t like heroes with a dead wife. I get that – this is not the book for you. And yes, we meet and get to know Jen in book two – and now she is dead. That may make you shake your fist. But if you can get past that – try this book. Sonali Dev will make you feel so much in this one. It’s one of those books where every single sentence holds such meaning. I have loved all of her books but this one is on another level.
A truly exquisite book.
Grade: A
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