Heart to Heart by Lurlene McDaniel

Review by Sarah, 14 years old, from California

Lurlene McDaniel’s Heart to Heart is a realistic fictional story that is about a two girls named Elowyn Eden and Kassey Messechek, who are best friends, are living their life to the fullest in the city of Atlanta.Unfortunately, later does Kassey know that when Elowyn received a brand new car for her birthday, Elowyn decided to check the organ donor box when she was getting registered. After a series of events,Elowyn ends up in getting into a car crash and does not survive all the caustic injuries. Since she was a donor, all her organs were sent off all over the country. However, one of her organs, the heart, was sent to a city not too far from where they were living. Kassey, who’s devastated, and all of the families are in search for this girl who received their dear Elowyn’s heart. Arabeth St. Clair is a girl who’s struggled her whole life, through the death of her dad, moving to a lot of places, finding no true friends, and having to live with her own heart condition. As all seems to be only getting worse, Arabeth and her mom are completely rejoicing when they find out that they have a match of a heart for Arabeth. However, they do not know who to be eternally grateful to. Furthermore, when the lives of all these friends and families start to intertwine, everyone’s life begins to go up and down, starting from loss to renewal. I enjoyed this book very much; it was a cute little story that really captured the essence of the emotion of losing someone. I also liked how in every chapter, there was a different perspective, so that I could perceive all the different aspects of the story. Some weaknesses of this book would probably that it’s too short! I feel like maybe there could be more depth in the plot and have a more interesting ending. But overall, the book was pretty good. I would rate this book, on a scale of one to four, a three. With all things considered, the intended audience would be teenagers (probably girls) who like a realistic story that contains some twists because this book is in the perspectives of two teenage girls and it is really easy to relate.

Posted on 2012-06-16