Rowena’s review of Things We Know by Heart by Jessi Kirby.
When Quinn Sullivan meets the recipient of her boyfriend’s donated heart, the two form an unexpected connection.
After Quinn loses her boyfriend, Trent, in an accident their junior year, she reaches out to the recipients of his donated organs in hopes of picking up the pieces of her now-unrecognizable life. She hears back from some of them, but the person who received Trent’s heart has remained silent. The essence of a person, she has always believed, is in the heart. If she finds Trent’s, then maybe she can have peace once and for all.
Risking everything in order to finally lay her memories to rest, Quinn goes outside the system to track down nineteen-year-old Colton Thomas—a guy whose life has been forever changed by this priceless gift. But what starts as an accidental run-in quickly develops into more, sparking an undeniable attraction. She doesn’t want to give in to it—especially since he has no idea how they’re connected—but their time together has made Quinn feel alive again. No matter how hard she’s falling for Colton, each beat of his heart reminds her of all she’s lost…and all that remains at stake.
Jessi Kirby delivered another winner for me.
Quinn Sullivan’s boyfriend dies and his organs were donated to those in need of them. In an effort to I don’t know, move on from his death, she writes letters to each of the recipients of Trent’s organs and hears back from everyone but the one guy that got Trent’s heart. She can’t move on, not knowing where Trent’s heart went so she does a little digging and her digging leads her to a nearby coastal town where she comes face to face with Colton Thomas. The guy that got Trent’s heart.
She wasn’t expecting to run into him and she definitely wasn’t expecting to strike up a relationship with him but all of that happened anyway. She thought if she knew who had Trent’s heart that that would be enough to jump start her life again but life has a way of throwing things that we aren’t expecting into our lives and the more time she let herself spend with Colton, the more she fell…for him.
Quinn was pretty great as the protagonist. As each day passed and she starts to live her life again with someone new, the guilt and the grief is felt. I felt it all. When she is depressed over losing her best friend and her first love, I was right there with her. When her curiosity drove her to do some pretty intense things (cyber stalk Colton’s sister’s blog, driving out to look at Colton, etc…), I was right there in the car, urging her to go. Going through each day wasn’t easy for Quinn, developing feelings for a new boy wasn’t handled lightly by Quinn and I thought Kirby did an excellent job of describing everything that Quinn was feeling and going through.
I thought that her relationship with Colton happened gradually and I really enjoyed seeing them get closer and closer. Every character in this story felt genuine and real. They were very three dimensional from Quinn to Colton to Colton’s sister and everyone in Quinn’s family.
Out of everyone in the story, I connected with Quinn the most because her feelings and her grief took me back to a few years back when I lost some really important people to me. It’s not an easy thing to go through and you want to move forward with your life but it’s hard. You have your good days and you have some really bad days but like Quinn, you have to learn to push through the bad days and I just really liked seeing Quinn come into her own.
Overall, this story was a fantastic addition to Jessi Kirby’s backlist. It was enjoyable, it pulled at your heart strings and there were light moments that will bring a smile to your face. There were a lot of times where Quinn could have come clean about everything she knew about Colton and she chose not to. Those times drove me crazy because when the shit finally hits the fan, it hit the fan so hard that my heart shattered for Colton. I remember saying out loud, “Damn, drama!” but alls well that ends well and this book definitely ended well.
Grade: 4 out of 5
This book is available from Harper Teen. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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