The Heart Between Us

What a unique and engaging story of love, brokenness, forgiveness, reconciliation, life and storms in life that threaten to paralyze us if we let them.
This story tells of a set of twins, Megan and Crystal, and the journey that helps them find themselves as well as healing their broken relationship and finding their way back to God.
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley, but was not required to give a positive review.

I was pleasantly surprised by the book, The Heart Between Us by Lindsay Harrel. The book cover caught my eye and then I was grabbed by the book description. I knew I just had to read it. NetGalley was kind enough to grant my request to read and review it. I wasn’t disappointed.
How do you live when you never really had a chance to live in the first place? Thirty-two year old Megan Jacobs gets to answer that question when she goes to meet her heart donor’s parents after three years of receiving their daughter Amanda’s heart. Her parents give Megan a chance that she never thought possible while being in and out of hospitals, all of her life and dreaming of one day being a travel writer. She grabs her courage and sets off to complete Amanda’s bucket list that she never have time to complete since her death at age 18.
Over her very concerned mother’s protests and her dad’s blessing, her twin sister Crystal reluctantly comes along for the ride. Even if Megan thinks Crystal has a perfect life, with her loving husband Brian, a dream job in New York as an architect, her life is far from perfect. Her marriage is on the rocks and her job is stressing her out despite a chance to land her dream job of being a senior architect.
This trip gives the sisters a chance to mend a bond that snapped and frayed the day of Megan’s heart surgery, when Crystal fled to New York because she couldn’t stand the guilt of being healthy and feeling that Megan was more loved than she was by their parents.
Megan’s longtime friend Celeb received his new heart before Megan and is now living his dream with no fear but can Megan step past her fear and do the same?
Through Amanda’s journal and her 25 items on her bucket list, Megan starts to live as God meant for her to live. She gain her own courage through Amanda’s personal trial of trying to live again after her Uncle Joe physically abused her at age ten, and gain her own strength by letting go and letting God despite the hardness of doing so.
The Heart Between Us book is more than just a physical heart between donor and receiver, it spans the bond between sisters, a husband and wife, two longtime friends that could be more if they let it. Let the chains of fear of the past fall and soar.

Most of my issues with this book are a result of me being less than attentive in selecting to read it. For some reason I thought this would be YA (Based on the cover design and references to "guys" and "girls" in the description) and I totally missed the fact that it was Christian fiction (which is decidedly not my thing.)

However, in spite of these things, I still rather enjoyed this book. It was more light on the travel details than I would have preferred. In the end, it's more a book about facing your fears and deciding what paths to go down in life, than it is about bucket lists and heart transplants.

While I'm not into all of the "god will decide for us" stuff, I did appreciate that these women were both learning that they couldn't control everything in their lives and that sometimes you must let go and rely on faith. While in this book, "faith" was a decidedly Christian concept, it left itself open to interpretation. So in spite of the Christian label, I didn't think this book was overly preachy. It still resonated with me.

In some respects, I feel like this cover doesn't do this book any favors. First, as mentioned above, it reads very "YA" to me, AND very "travel romance." It's so light and fluffy in design it kind of suggests a book without much substance. I think that does this book a disservice. (While there is some cliche stuff in here, this book also has some depth.) If this book was only about the sister with the heart problem, maybe this cover would be sufficient. But the married sister's issues and journey far more complex and adult, and this cover (promo language) didn't set me up for that.

Thanks to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Megan, 32 years old and still living with her parents in small town Minnesota, lost her whole childhood to a serious cardiac disease, and continues to live in fear despite a heart transplant three years earlier. Her estranged twin sister, Crystal, who remained healthy, lives in New York with her handsome firefighter husband and is a successful architect. When Megan finds the courage to finally visit the parents of her donor, 18 year old Amanda, she is inspired by the bucket list in Amanda’s journal to go travelling and check off all of the items on the list. Crystal, struggling with work-life balance and needing inspiration for her dream project, decides to travel with her at short notice, so the girls jet off on a whirlwind round the world tour.

This appealed to me because of the travel, the bucket list storyline, and the dynamic of sisters finding their way back to one another. I suspected from the cover that I might find it a bit sweet for my tastes, and did not realise when I requested it that it was Christian Fiction, a new genre to me. Personally, I did not like the increasingly frequent religious elements, and would not read this genre again. Apart from this, I liked it, in spite of the completely predictable plot. Megan and Crystal were good characters struggling with the legacy of Megan’s illness. I would’ve liked to read more about their travels and adventures, and less about Crystal’s work dramas and marital stress. The travel doctor part of me was horrified at an immunosuppressed patient tripping off to seriously high risk destinations with no vaccinations or medical advice, but I understand most people wouldn’t want to read about that.

Overall this was a cute heart-warming story with an inevitable romance but the Christian messages were too heavy for me.

OK, so it's not the best written book in the world. But it's cute, the love story is sweet, and it's certainly not the WORST written thing in the world. It's an easy read and even though my eyes glazed over certain parts due to boredom, they were drawn back enough to give the story a solid two stars. The author has marvelous potential! Also, it's easy to relate to the main characters, and the dialogue is nice.

Spun with irresistible dialogue and a unique premise, The Heart Between Us is a unique canvas of women's fiction, threaded with romance, that transplants the reader to a buoyant collage of European locales.

A bucket list adventure underscored by deeper tenets of faith, friendship and the bonds that tether us together even as we drift apart.

A colourful thesis of dreams and reconciling passion with circumstance, this will appeal to those with a hefty dollop of wanderlust as well as the hopeless romantics amongst us: romanticism of place and human interconnection balance each well-written page.

This book is a great heartwarming tale of two twin sisters and their different lives. Megan is a cautious young woman who tries to do everything right due to her heart transplant a few years before. Crystal is her sister who is an overachiever who pushes herself to do everything to achieve what she thinks are her dreams. Both sisters have endured through hardships due to Megan’s sickness and heart transplant. Through the discovery of Megan’s heart donor and her bucket list, Megan and Crystal are able to discover themselves as they journey through the list. This book allows the reader to believe anyone can change positively, and that through second chances anyone can become the person they aspire to be. I highly recommend this book! This was the first book I have read by Ms. Harrel, but I will be reading more of her books.
***I was given a free electronic copy of this book from the publisher. This is my honest opinion. Even though I received this copy free, this is my own opinion.

This book took me a bit to get into. The point of view switches from one sister to the other made it somewhat difficult to get into. Just when I would get interested in one sister's story it would switch to the other and it slowed the progress of the story down a little. I thought the premise of the book was great. I enjoyed watching the sisters relationship heal after years of misunderstanding, hurt feelings and fear. I loved the religious aspect of their healing but felt like even more could have been done with this but at the same time the book doesn't feel like it was meant to be too deep so perhaps it was just right as it is. I enjoyed the brief descriptions of the places they traveled and wished there was more substance to be gleaned from each of the places and events that happened. I guess I felt like this book had potential to be a great, deep, profound, healing type book but didn't quite get there. It touched on weighty topics but didn't dig in and explore them that much. It was a lovely read and had a great message but not something that will change my life or cause me to think too much.

3.5 stars -
To be absolutely honest, it took me some time to really grab what was happening with the plot with this book. In fact there was a moment in which I considered putting the book down for good. I'm glad that I stuck with it.

Twin sisters Crystal & Megan are so far apart, physically - emotionally. They haven't spoken or seen each other in years. One a talented junior architect for a prestigious Manhattan firm. Married and struggling to balance that ever seeming challenge of a healthy relationship between work and home life. Brian her husband patiently has stood by as she continually puts him second to the all encompassing dream of senior architect. How much longer can he put his plans and dreams on hold? When will Crystal ever find the time for the life they thought they would have together?

Megan, recovering heart transplant patient, is now healthy but living her life, literally in so much fear that she choose 'safe' over adventure. Living with her parents and working a go nowhere job at the local library - this story begins with a chance meeting with Caleb. The one man she has always admired. Fellow transplant patient and support person. She has turned down opportunity with him before, but this moment is a turning point of sorts and Megan sets out to meet the parents of her heart donor. A journal, a bucket list, an opportunity to reconnect with her estranged twin. A trip of a lifetime around the world becomes the main focus of the book.

I had hoped for more interaction between Megan & Caleb especially. There were times when I felt it fell a little monotonous. But as this journey starts to bear it's end, things pick up and it pulls you right in.

Clever concept of this very real struggle that heart disease and the opportunity to get a transplant and all the strain that has put on the two sisters. A clever title, and two wonderful peaceful endings. I appreciated the reminder that we cannot control most of the situations we find ourselves in during this life on earth. When we spend our time worrying about that which we can't control we are failing to put our trust in God, and all that He can offer. Even if His plan is not to spare the hurt, He will provide the love and hope.

Thank you to Netgalley for the eARC. Look out for this book in the New Year.

A great read....Christian fiction without being preachy. An interesting story line and and an all too realistic broken family relationship. Sometimes we just need to get out of our own way to heal a broken bond and move into a happier future.. Let go, and let God.