Saving His Heart by Avery Maxwell

After a small break to read ARCs, I’m back on the Avery Maxwell train and I couldn’t be happier to be there. I finished Saving His Heart yesterday after starting it last weekend but putting it aside because I spent most of last week sick. Yesterday I had a lot to do, but I ended up sitting and reading this book. I even went to my son’s band competition at 6:30 but continued reading just to lift my head to see his band’s performance! 🙈

Preston was rough in book one and two and appeared to be a man whore, but, that’s not his story at all.

Spoiler alert ahead.

Sadly, Preston’s story may break you down. I have to be really honest and say that there were a few reasons I took 1/2 a star from Saving His Heart and one of these reasons is that Preston is dying and has been dying for TEN YEARS. Yes, 10 long years, Preston has known he will die of an inherited cardiomyopathy. Preston has kept his 10 long years of dying from his family. Preston is living his life like a dead man walking. For 10 years, he’s kept diaries to his loved ones, set up charities in their names and basically fixed everything he could for those he loves.

Enter Emory. Emory is a young cardiac surgeon who is just starting her career, but she has had her license suspended and she has a bad family story concerning her Dad. Em has 3 sisters that she raised from when she, herself, was 6 years old. Preston’s cardiologist has recommended Emory to give him his treatments, as he’s coming to the end of his life. After one year of Emory giving Preston treatments, Preston has to cover up why she is there with his family and a fake relationship starts between them. The fake relationship becomes real and Emory finds a family in Preston’s.

I loved this story, but it brought up some painful memories for me, and the way that Preston verbalized his pain that he knows he won’t be there in the future is a real tear jerker. This is an extremely emotional book.

The things that didn’t work for me were the medical parts of this story. I’m a nurse and it was a bit difficult to read some of the medical scenes in this book since they aren’t based in any fact. Also: the tidbit that Preston was not sharing his diagnosis with his family and his care team was aware of this fact, should have had him in therapy. Just from a mental health point of view, that would have been nice to see, and for Preston nothing should have been holding him back from counseling. After Preston is saved from, literally, death’s door (he was removed from life support and actively dying when the Hail Mary happened), he would have been really suffering with mental health issues due to all of that stress after 10 years of actively planning on dying, so again, it would have been good to see some therapy.

All in all, I loved the story and enjoyed it so much. I’m looking forward to book 4!