Early this morning, around 1 am, I decided to start the above titled book by Dean Koontz so that I could return it in good conscience to the library. I had borrowed it before for two weeks and never read it which was bothering me so I checked it out again.
The story is about a rich young man who has an enlarged heart and needs a transplant. His first doctor puts him on the transplant list where he waits for a bit but he becomes impatient and begins to go to a doctor who has more of an international reputation for heart replacements. He has to fly to Singapore for the heart but gets one in about a month of going with the new doctor.
After he has the heart for a year, he starts seeing an Asian woman who threatens his life and tells him once or twice that his heart belongs to her. In the end, his life is changed forever and all the things he thought were important, he finds weren’t really important at all.
Ok, the book takes a very long, long time to get to where he has the transplant and starts to get harassed. The flap makes it sound like the harassment and stalking go on for awhile but that isn’t true in the book – the stalker appears infrequently and is hardly even noticed until the end.
The flaps says: “In a heartbeat (pun intended I suppose), the medical miracle that gave Ryan a second chance at life is about to become a curse worse than death. For Ryan is being stalked by a mysterious woman who feels entitled to everything he has.” The flap starts out saying the book is “a riveting thriller that probes the deepest terrors of the human psyche – and the ineffable mystery of what truly makes us who we are.”
Sorry guys – it isn’t that much of a thriller and the woman never once mentions she wants anything of his but the heart that beats in his chest. Her stalking involves leaving two gifts and giving him a nasty papercut with a switchblade…other than that she is pretty absent.
I say the thing leads up to a whole lot of nothing and I’m disappointed with the conclusion which I thought was trite and predictable.
I was expecting…hoping…for a book as full of intensity as the book…well, “Intensity”…which kept me glued to each page to the exclusion of all else except the occasional bathroom break. When it mentioned stalking and the human psyche, I thought it would be more about that and less about his delusions. Whatever.
One thing I do know for certain, I’m glad I checked it out from the library rather than paying $27.00 for it. Someday I’ll buy it to add to my Dean Koontz collection just to keep the collection complete – but it will be from a second hand store where I can get it for a couple of dollars.
