I enjoyed Dev’s first three books and was looking forward to this one. It features two minor (but important) characters from A Change of Heart, so I was excited to see their story.

Kimi was confined to a sterile room for most of her childhood. As a result, she doesn’t really have friends—except for the boy who clean bird crap off the side of the house. Rahul lost his father at fourteen and became the man of the house. Kimi’s father is a wealthy ex-Bollywood star and because Rahul’s father died protecting him, he tries to help Rahul’s family out. But Rahul is stubborn and doesn’t like the handouts, so he does work around Kimi’s house (”The Mansion,” as he calls it). 

Their friendship develops over time and although Kimi is clearly in love with him, he’s holding back for some reason. She doesn’t know why and it frustrates her. When the book opens, Kimi has recently had a heart transplant—and professed her love for Rahul and been shot down. But for some reason, a particularly vile gangster who ran a black market of organs from people he had killed has it out for her. As Rahul is a police officer, he ends up protecting her and they get out of Dodge. There’s more to it than escape, but I won’t give that away. Still, it forces them to be together even though Kimi told him to stay away after he rejected her. 

This one is more or less a romantic suspense. But I’m not sure it’s all the way there, partially because of Dev’s chosen narrative style. It’s a little different from her others because it relies much more heavily on flashback in order to show the development of Kimi and Rahul’s early friendship. That may be the reason that the book was slow to get going for me. I read her others fairly quickly, but I was only doing a chapter or two a night with this one until I got about a quarter in. But then it picked up.

Anyone who’s read the others, particularly A Change of Heart, will enjoy this one. You don’t have to have read her others, but I think you’d get more out of it if you have.