A CHANGE OF HEART is an emotionally charged read. It is not something to be read in between snatches of time but to be devoured and savoured. The book will not let you put it down with the feelings, emotions, deceit, helplessness and love just make it an amazing read.

This is the first book I have read by Sonali Dev and I have already bought another one, The Bollywood Bride to read. I received a copy of A Change of Heart by Sonali Dev through Net Galley. I recommend this book to all lovers of love. Readers who dig bittersweet love stories will love this one as I have read few like this one. It is a moving story of second chances and finding love.

The book revolves around Nic or Nikhil a ‘Doctors Without Borders’ who has lost his wife and Jess, a dancer from Bollywood who claims to have his dead wife Jen/ Jennifer’s heart through a transplant. She asks him to help find proof about an organ transplant racket that caused her death.  Jen was helping to find proof and had hidden away before her untimely death.

The author has such mastery with words and sentiments that I was on an emotional rollercoaster along with Nic and Jess. Their meeting, their interaction, the concern, kind gestures they want no one to see. The feelings that overwhelm them yet they persevere. It was simply masterful.

The family and doting parents of Nic added to the charm of the book making it sweet and endearing as well as sad as we see a mother, two, in fact, pine away for their child. Sonali has such mastery over the pain and guilt as well as the betrayal. I was amazed by the sadness but it does not make the book any dull or morose. In fact, it makes it so much more real.

True love causes heartbreak, changes us forever and A Change Of Heart is the perfect example. This book has enough mystery to keep the pages turning, enough heartbreak to keep mind engrossed and enough love to make me a fan.

The trip that brings Nic and Jen close also explores their pasts and connects them. And really finding Jen, in the end, was the best part.  I found the secondary characters well-etched. Joy, Sweety, Nic’s parents all have depth and add to the flow of the story. I want to know about Ria and Vikram’s love story as well as about the evil Naag and Asif Khan. The feisty Kimi and DCP Rahul Savant made the story quite real without making it gruesome are crucial characters who need stories of their own. I hope Sonali pens their story soon so we can also find more about Naag and how it ends!

Jen and Nic might have found each other but all of us will need to know how it finally ends and Jennifer’s courage is not in vain. A love story that kept me obsessing about it for days, pick it to be hooked to Sonali’s writing.

5 stars.

© Inderpreet Kaur Uppal

A Change of Heart 

by

Sonali Dev

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.