Heart Like Mine

Amy Hatvany is carving out a nice niche for herself in the Barbara Delinsky/Jodi Picoult Women's Fiction genre. Heart Like Mine is a well-written, thoughtful novel where there are no heroes or villains, just realistic characters dealing with incredibly difficult situations. Grace is madly in love with Victor and, although she never particularly wanted to be a mother, she is satisfied with seeing his two children on his alternating weekends. But when his ex-wife Kelli dies suddenly, Grace has to reassess their relationship, including an engagement so recent they haven't even told Victor's kids yet. What does Grace owe Victor and his kids, and is this still the relationship she wants?

Meanwhile, Victor's teenaged daughter Ava is grieving her mother's death while also feeling resentment towards her father and his girlfriend and anger towards her mother for leaving her behind. Already an outsider at school, she doesn't want to be known as “the girl whose mother died.”

Both Grace and Victor fear that Kelli's death might have been a suicide, and chapters told from the dead woman's point of view provide insight into her troubled psyche. Kelli was an emotionally fragile woman who had never recovered from an adolescent trauma, but she desperately loved her children. Was she falling deeper into despair or was she about to turn the corner?

Despite the difficult subject matter, the story moves quickly as the reader wants to find out the mystery behind Kelli's death and see a positive resolution for the remaining characters. My one quibble is the unlikely premise that Grace, the director of a battered women's shelter, would drive a Lexus (a fact that bothers Ava, given Kelli's more modest lifestyle). But that's a small point in an otherwise engaging novel.