A Change of Heart

by Sonali Dev

Overview

Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction of the Year  ● NPR Great Reads  ● RUSA Reading List Longlist Selection  ● RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice Award Winner

“A rising talent.” —Booklist

Dr. Nikhil 'Nic' Joshi had it all—marriage, career, purpose. Until, while working for Doctors Without Borders in a Mumbai slum, his wife, Jen, discovered a black market organ transplant ring. Before she could expose the truth, Jen was killed.

Two years after the tragedy, Nic is a cruise ship doctor who spends his days treating seasickness and sunburn and his nights in a boozy haze. On one of those blurry evenings on deck, Nic meets a woman who makes a startling claim: she received Jen’s heart in a transplant and has a message for him. Nic wants to discount Jess Koirala’s story as absurd, but there’s something about her reckless desperation that resonates despite his doubts.

Jess has spent years working her way out of a nightmarish life in Calcutta and into a respectable Bollywood dance troupe. Now she faces losing the one thing that matters—her young son, Joy.  She needs to uncover the secrets Jen risked everything for; but the unforeseen bond that results between her and Nic is both a lifeline and a perilous complication.

Delving beyond the surface of modern Indian-American life, acclaimed author Sonali Dev’s page-turning novel is both riveting and emotionally rewarding—an extraordinary story of human connection, bravery, and hope. 

Praise for Sonali Dev and Her Novels


“Sonali Dev is a gifted writer who creates characters that capture the heart… I can’t wait for Sonali’s next book.” —Nalini Singh, New York Times bestselling author

“Exquisitely written... A bright, beautiful gem.”   —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review, on The Bollywood Bride

“Dev's prose captures the rich and unique beauty of Indian culture while telling a story that is complex, culturally accurate, and full of emotion.”  —Booklist on The Bollywood Bride

“Vibrant and exuberantly romantic…chock full of details that reflect India's social and cultural flux.” —NPR.com on A Bollywood Affair

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496705747
Publisher:	Kensington
Publication date:	09/27/2016
Series:	Bollywood Series , #3
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sonali Dev’s first literary work was a play about mistaken identities performed at her neighborhood Diwali extravaganza in Mumbai. She was eight years old. Despite this early success, Sonali spent the next few decades getting degrees in architecture and written communication, migrating across the globe, and starting a family while writing for magazines and websites. With the advent of her first gray hair her love for telling stories returned full force, and she now combines it with her insights into Indian culture to conjure up stories that make a mad tangle with her life as supermom, domestic goddess, and world traveler. Sonali is an active member of RWA and WFWA. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her very patient and often amused husband and two teens who demand both patience and humor, and the world’s most perfect dog. Visit her on the web at sonalidev.com.

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/01/2016
Just as one heart leads to another—literally and metaphorically—in Dev’s seductive and complex story of love lost and then found, one layer of mystery leads to the next. Two years after Dr. Nikhil “Nic” Joshi was held a helpless witness to his wife Jen’s rape and murder in a Mumbai slum, he is literally and metaphorically at sea: he’s awash in Jack Daniels and afloat on a luxury ocean liner as the ship’s physician. Both the whiskey and the travel help him escape from the horrific nightmares that mock his loving memories of his wife. As if to further defile his tortured heart, he starts to see fleeting glimpses of Jen. It’s not a ghost but a woman, Jess, the recipient of Jen’s transplanted heart. Jess is on a mission—driven by her new heart—to bring those responsible for Jen’s death to justice, and she needs Nic’s help. Dev follows them through Chicago, Mumbai, and the Caribbean as they work to bust a black market organ-transplant gang, and soon their hearts entwine. Dev moves so expertly through the subtle layers of the tender love story that Nic and Jess—and even Jen—will hold a permanent place in readers’ hearts. Agent: Claudia Cross, Folio Literary Management. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2016-06-30
Mystery, adventure, and romance are spiced with Bollywood glamour in this heart-stopping novel.Nikhil Joshi, an Indian-American cruise-ship doctor, is drowning his sorrows in Jack Daniel’s. Two years earlier, his pregnant wife, Jen, a physician working in a Mumbai slum for Doctors Without Borders, was murdered before his eyes; unbeknownst to her husband, Jen was working to expose an illegal organ-transplant enterprise committing gruesome “murders to carve out organs.” Suddenly, Jess Koirala, a beautiful Bollywood dancer, appears in Nikhil’s life with an uncanny knowledge of Jen and the circumstances of their marriage. Jess tells Nikhil that she can channel Jen because she received Jen’s heart in a transplant; she even shows him the scar on her chest from the operation. Nikhil becomes obsessed with her and her intimate knowledge of his life. But Jess is being blackmailed by Jen’s killers into pursuing Nikhil to find the incriminating evidence that Jen was murdered for; her blackmailers are even terrorizing her 7-year-old son in order to force her to cooperate. Soon, Jess is being hunted down by both the Mumbai mob and the police, who are racing to find the damning evidence. Will Nikhil fall into the extortionist’s web and become involved with gorgeous Jess or wake up and smell the chai? Will Jess be able to extract the location of Jen’s evidence from Nikhil and save her son’s life, or will she weaken in the face of Nikhil’s overpowering charisma? Dev (The Bollywood Bride, 2015, etc.) masterfully probes Jess' and Nikhil’s rawest emotions through her multilayered Rubik’s cube of a plot. Every time the reader thinks he or she has figured out the end of the novel, the story’s quick-paced narrative, which races back and forth from the U.S. to India, takes another hairpin turn, leaving the reader breathless. This is riveting, heart-pounding drama. Dev takes the characters and the reader on a death-defying ride. A novelist at the height of her powers.

Kirkus Reviews

Soneela Nankani narrates this dark and tortured romance with the perfect balance of compassion and anger. Dr. Nikhil Joshi’s life hit rock bottom after the death of his wife, Jen, two years ago. He’s barely staying afloat as a doctor on a cruise ship when he meets Jess, a mysterious young woman who says she received Jen’s heart in a transplant. Jess has her own demons to battle and cannot afford any distractions from her mission. This latest book by Sonali Dev is a departure from her previous titles, and Nankani does an excellent job capturing its despair and anguish as well as the cautious joy and hope felt by both Nikhil and Jess. Overall, Nankani delivers a compelling narration. K.M.P. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2016 - AudioFile