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A review by book_concierge
Heart to Heart by Lurlene McDaniel
3.0
Arabeth doesn’t have a best friend, or really any friends. An Army brat whose father died in Afghanistan, she has always moved from place to place, and her diseased heart has isolated her from other children. At fourteen she should be looking forward to high school, but she is confined to her room, tethered to oxygen. Not far away in another Atlanta suburb, Kassey and Elowyn are best friends. Kassey vacations with Elowyn and her parents, they attend the same school, are both on the varsity volleyball team, and when Elowyn gets a car for her 16th birthday, she gives Kassey the extra set of keys. They share everything … or almost everything. Because Elowyn never tells Kassey she checked the organ donor box on her driver’s license.
This is a simply told story of three girls and how their lives intersect as a result of tragedy. It’s pretty predictable and contains the usual teen drama (first boyfriend, first kiss, first fight, first breakup, etc). I do like that McDaniel portrayed the teens fairly realistically – they were sometimes mean or thoughtless, lacked judgment, worried about what others thought, wanted to be popular, obsessed over “the cute guy,” jumped to conclusions, fought and made-up in the space of a few minutes. She also showed the adults as being caring but enforcing rules (and the teens sometimes ignoring the guidance given). I really hated the names; even my spell-checker didn’t like any of them. One would think there are no longer any kids named Mary or Sam.
One glaring misstatement made me judge the book rather harshly; a cardiologist does NOT perform transplant surgery, a cardiovascular surgeon DOES perform the transplant. But I reminded myself that this is a young-adult novel and tried to judge it based on the intended audience. I think my 13-year-old niece would enjoy the book. It’s a fast read and it fulfilled a couple of challenges for me.
This is a simply told story of three girls and how their lives intersect as a result of tragedy. It’s pretty predictable and contains the usual teen drama (first boyfriend, first kiss, first fight, first breakup, etc). I do like that McDaniel portrayed the teens fairly realistically – they were sometimes mean or thoughtless, lacked judgment, worried about what others thought, wanted to be popular, obsessed over “the cute guy,” jumped to conclusions, fought and made-up in the space of a few minutes. She also showed the adults as being caring but enforcing rules (and the teens sometimes ignoring the guidance given). I really hated the names; even my spell-checker didn’t like any of them. One would think there are no longer any kids named Mary or Sam.
One glaring misstatement made me judge the book rather harshly; a cardiologist does NOT perform transplant surgery, a cardiovascular surgeon DOES perform the transplant. But I reminded myself that this is a young-adult novel and tried to judge it based on the intended audience. I think my 13-year-old niece would enjoy the book. It’s a fast read and it fulfilled a couple of challenges for me.