3/7/25
Haha I had no idea that I’d tried to read this before when I picked it up! Wow, I guess I really should check my goodreads before I try a new book…
But I think in 2021 I was very sensitive to political agendas, far more than I am now that the world has calmed down a bit. I noticed the same scenario I mentioned below (and quite a few other strategic woke placements), but this time I could overlook them easier since they didn’t actually affect the story that much.
This is really just a chick lit story, similar to Beth Moran’s, except that she has NO political agendas or sexual content at all, which is why I read her so much. This one also turned out to be a feel-good story about working through trauma, finding home, peace, and eventually also love. There was a classic chick flick scene at the end involving a misunderstanding and a near miss encounter, followed by a long distance chase culminating in romantic bliss.
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3/27/21
I was well into this one before I finally stopped it. The story itself is delightful: it’s about a pair of nurses who swap places, one in the city and one in the country. What connects them is a heart transplant: the girl who leaves London, Lissa, watched a hit-and-run of a boy she knew, and the man in the countryside, Cormac, was treating the girl who received the boy’s heart. Lissa has PTSD from the event, and is sent away so she can slow down and heal. The story is thus episodic, following each of them through their fish-out-of-water experiences as they deal with the other nurse’s patients. It’s told in such a charming, human way: each patient is a real person, and Lissa and Cormac are forced to forget themselves and tend to someone else’s needs as best they can. But it’s not a job to either of them–they really care about people.
Because it was so charming, I overlooked a lot of the political agendas that were slyly hinted at here and there, because they seemed peripheral to the story. A few of the patients they met spoke in fluent f-bombs, but since the whole story wasn’t like that, I overlooked it too. I finally stopped in disgust when one of Cormac’s patients who believes in homeopathy and doesn’t believe in vaccinations is portrayed as a heartless idiot without an ounce of compassion for her daughter or common sense. I don’t mind subtle agendas, but I do mind overt stereotyping.
My rating: ***1/2
Language: moderate
Violence: present but sensitively handled (like with kid gloves)
Sexual content: alluded to only
Political content: heavy enough that I stopped reading the first time, but not central to the plot
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