Three-and-a-Half Heartbeats

Amanda Prowse novels have been arriving on our bookshop shelves thick and fast over the past 3 years, with a higher than average number of releases per year for an author. Whilst I've enjoyed a couple of her novels so far I have always been a little sceptical about whether they can all be quality when balanced against the quantity being released. In some ways you want to be able to say that no one can possibly have that many amazing stories within them in such a short space of time.

It is therefore always a thought in the back of my mind when beginning one of her books that this one might just be the one where her story has slipped in order to meet a deadline. When I started Three & A Half Heartbeats I truly hoped this one wouldn't be the one to fit that trend and on balance I am pleased to say that again I was very happy with the journey this author took me on. When beginning this book we are immediately made aware that the book is not just about telling a story but about raising the awareness of Sepsis and the diseases terrible consequences on lives around the country.

This is the story of Grace and her husband Tom who live an idyllic life with their 4 year old daughter Chloe. Grace is a high flying business woman and Tom her stay at home husband raises their daughter whilst Grace travels to and from the city to maintain their lifestyle and finances. After Chloe contracts Sepsis following a routine operation and dies their lives are literally ripped apart. Suddenly they are thrown into a world that they don't understand and this book charts their journey through the months following their daughters death and allows you to make that journey with Grace as she seeks to make sense of why this awful disease took her daughter.

As with all Amanda Prowse novels the emphasis of the story is based on the emotional state of the main characters, as an author she is an expert at writing novels which pull on the readers heartstrings and are often very relatable to our own life experiences. In the case of this novel she explores the consequences of grief on a family of all generations and how people around us approach those who are grieving and why there is never a right or wrong way to deal with this time in anyone's life.

This was a wonderful story, some of the chapters in which Grace spent time with mysterious Huw were some of the most touching in the book. As they each shared their experiences of the loss of important people in their lives we watch the beginnings of a friendship that will transcend grief and allow them both to move forward in their lives.

Another wonderful story from Prowse, again she's proven me wrong by providing another quality story with strong, well rounded characters and offers a lesson that we can all learn from by reading and understanding the disease at the heart of this book. If it saves even one life through the raising of awareness then it will have been a major achievement, however this aside it is a wonderful, touching and eminently enjoyable book.