October 1, 2019

1st Line/1st Paragraph: The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae by Stephanie Butland

I’m linking up this week with Vicki @ I’d Rather Be At The Beach who hosts a meme every Tuesday to share the First Chapter/First Paragraph of the book you are currently reading.

I’m pleased to share a passage from The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae by Stephanie Butland. This is an ARC and will be available for purchase on October 29, 2019. Have you read this author’s previous book, The Lost For Words Bookshop? (find my review of that here)

From Amazon:

“For fans of Josie Silver’s One Day in December, The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae is a wholly original, charismatic, and uplifting novel that no reader will soon forget.

Ailsa Rae is learning how to live. She’s only a few months past the heart transplant that—just in time—saved her life. Now, finally, she can be a normal twenty-eight-year-old. She can climb a mountain. Dance. Wait in line all day for tickets to Wimbledon.

But first, she has to put one foot in front of the other. So far, things are as bloody complicated as ever. Her relationship with her mother is at a breaking point and she wants to find her father. Then there’s Lennox, whom Ailsa loved and lost. Will she ever find love again?

Her new heart is a bold heart. She just needs to learn to listen to it. From the hospital to her childhood home, on social media and IRL, Ailsa will embark on a journey about what it means to be, and feel, alive. How do we learn to be brave, to accept defeat, to dare to dream?

From Stephanie Butland, author of The Lost for Words Bookshop, The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae will warm you from the inside out.”

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The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae
by Stephanie Butland

*This post contains Amazon affiliate links

Genre/Categories: Contemporary Fiction, organ donation

1st Line/1st Paragraph From Chapter One:

It’s 3 a.m. here in cardio-thoracic.

All I can do for now is doze, and think, and doze again. My heart is getting weaker, my body bluer. People I haven’t seen for a while are starting to drop in. We all pretend we’re not getting ready to say goodbue. It seems easiest. But my mother cries when she thinks I’m sleeping, so maybe here, now, is the time to admit that I might really be on the way out.

I should be grateful. A baby born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome a few years before I was would have died within days. I’ve had twenty-eight years and I’ve managed to do quite a bit of living in them. (Also, I’ve had WAY more operations than you every day folk. I totally win on that.) OK, so I still live at home and I’ve never had a job and I’m blue around the edges because there’s never quite enough oxygen in my system. But…

Actually, but nothing. If you’re here tonight for the usual BlueHeart cheerfulness-in-the-teeth-of-disaster, you need to find another blogger.

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Within the first few pages, we find out that Ailsa receives her heart transplant, names her new heart Apple, and begins to spend her days figuring out how to live now that she’s not facing certain, early death. Ailsa is a blogger, and the story appears to be written in memoir style. Paging through the book, I notice that the format includes first-person blog entries and emails, articles, and narrative passages written in third-person.

I’m eager to dive into this after enjoying The Lost For Words Bookshop by the same author. Here is my review of Lost For Words.

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QOTD:

Do you enjoy issue-centered books?

Is The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae on your TBR?

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***Blogs posts may contain affiliate links. This means that at no extra cost to you, I can earn a small percentage of your purchase price.

Unless explicitly stated that they are free, all books that I review have been purchased by me or borrowed from the library.

Book Cover and author photo are credited to Amazon or an author’s (or publisher’s) website.