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.
If you ask me which book totally surprised me this year I'd say it's this one. A Change of Heart about a grieving widower whose life is in shambles after witnessing his wife's death, is a masterful mix of mystery, romance, murder, political intrigue and a perilous descent into the world of black market trade. I couldn't have imagined it possible to write such a story that incorporates all these themes but here it is!
Things start out vaguely: Nic's a barely functioning cruise ship doctor who prefers to be in a drunken stupor most of the time. Jess appears out of nowhere with a cryptic message about his late wife, Jen. It's a bit confusing to understand at the beginning but it sets the tone. Jess has an urgent agenda that can only be completed with Nic in full control of his faculties which means she has to insinuate herself into his life more than she's already done so. Despite his apprehension, he's desperate to cling to anything that can help him understand what happened to Jen. Jess' motives are revealed in brief snatches but we are given enough to know that someone else is pulling the strings and she has much at stake. It's impossible not to get emotionally wrapped up in Nic's grief or Jess' distress. There is a sinister undertone thanks to some gruesome elements, and the more they uncover about Jen, the more dire their situation becomes.
"This man, for all his brokenness, was a healer."
~ A Change of Heart, p.95
Nic and Jess are hugely complex individuals yet these two who are so broken develop this strange synergy between them. Somehow they get through to each other and as unlikely as that is, I liked their impact on each other. While Nic and Jess run hot and cold, there's police officer, Rahul, who serves as the story's moral compass. As someone investigating Jen's death, he's the one shining beacon of integrity in this entire story.
I couldn't have imagined how much I'd love A Change of Heart and I promise you that you will run the gamut of emotions as you read it. You'll also be amazed by how cleverly the details are ultimately woven together. I clung to every word and felt all the anticipation and frenzy as it reached its climax. Dev writes emotions into something that I can see and even now months later I find myself thinking back to particular scenes. This is certain to be my first of many Sonali Dev books that I will read.
~ Bel
Note: I didn't realize until I was done that this is the third book in Dev's Bollywood Series and I'm happy to say that it can be read as a standalone. The fourth book, A Distant Heart releases in December.
