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Saturday, 29 December 2018

The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae by Stephanie Butland

Lost For Words by the same author was one of my top five books of 2018, so I was more than enthusiastic to read this. I think Lost For Words is a hard act to follow. I didn't gel with this quite so much. That said, it was written with the same wholesomeness, so despite my misgivings, it is still an enjoyable book*.

Ailsa Rae, aged 28, has a heart transplant that saves her from very near death. Twenty-eight years of catching up to be done now. Where on earth is she going to start? Her health, up to now, has made all the decisions for her, so her head struggles to take on the task. So she runs polls on her blog to help her. Her mother finds it hard to slacken the reins of protectiveness for her sick daughter, whom she's looked after single-handedly. The love of her life missed out on a transplant…and died. Her future should be easy now, but it's all so hard.

Whilst this was all about Ailsa, I felt this was a little too much about Ailsa...not far off self-indulgence and as a consequence, I thought it was about a hundred pages too long. The present tense narrative didn't work for me, either. It was still a good read, however, and I'm glad I read another book by this talented author.

*provided by Netgalley

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