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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780553807134
ISBN number: 0553807137
Label: Bantam
Manufacturer: Bantam
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 352
Printing Date: November 25, 2008
Publishing house: Bantam
Release Date: November 25, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 92
Studio: Bantam
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Product Description:
From the #1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense comes a riveting thriller that probes the deepest terrors of the human psyche—and the ineffable mystery of what truly makes us who we are. Here a brilliant young man finds himself fighting for his very existence in a battle that starts with the most frightening words of all…
At thirty-four, Internet entrepreneur Ryan Perry seemed to have the world in his pocket—until the very first troubling symptoms appeared out of nowhere. Within days, he’s diagnosed with incurable cardiomyopathy and finds himself on the waiting list for a heart transplant; it’s his only hope, and it’s dwindling fast. Ryan is about to lose it all…his health, his girlfriend Samantha, and his life.
One year later, Ryan has never felt better. Business is good and he hopes to renew his relationship with Samantha. Then the unmarked gifts begin to appear—a box of Valentine candy hearts, a heart pendant. Most disturbing of all, a graphic heart surgery video and the chilling message: Your heart belongs to me.
In a heartbeat, the medical miracle that gave Ryan a second chance at life is about to become a curse worse than death. For Ryan is being stalked by a mysterious woman who feels entitled to everything he has. She’s the spitting image of the twenty-six-year-old donor of the heart beating steadily in Ryan’s own chest.
And she’s come to take it back.
From the Hardcover edition.
Amazon.com Review:
Book Description
From the #1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense comes a riveting thriller that probes the deepest terrors of the human psyche—and the ineffable mystery of what truly makes us who we are. Here a brilliant young man finds himself fighting for his very existence in a battle that starts with the most frightening words of all…
At thirty-four, Internet entrepreneur Ryan Perry seemed to have the world in his pocket—until the very first troubling symptoms appeared out of nowhere. Within days, he’s diagnosed with incurable cardiomyopathy and finds himself on the waiting list for a heart transplant; it’s his only hope, and it’s dwindling fast. Ryan is about to lose it all…his health, his girlfriend Samantha, and his life.
One year later, Ryan has never felt better. Business is good and he hopes to renew his relationship with Samantha. Then the unmarked gifts begin to appear—a box of Valentine candy hearts, a heart pendant. Most disturbing of all, a graphic heart surgery video and the chilling message: Your heart belongs to me.
In a heartbeat, the medical miracle that gave Ryan a second chance at life is about to become a curse worse than death. For Ryan is being stalked by a mysterious woman who feels entitled to everything he has. She’s the spitting image of the twenty-six-year-old donor of the heart beating steadily in Ryan’s own chest.
And she’s come to take it back.
Amazon Exclusive Essay: Dean Koontz on Writing Your Heart Belongs to Me
I have been asked by the secret masters of Amazon how much research into transplant surgery I did before writing Your Heart Belongs to Me. I would like to reveal that, in the interest of accuracy and the accumulation of vivid detail, and because I bring total commitment to my writing, I underwent a heart transplant myself, even though I didn't need one. This would be a lie, however, and people without a sense of humour would write by the hundreds to accuse me of taking a perfectly good heart needed by some patient who really needed it.
To prepare for this novel, I read a few books on the subject of transplants, watched two educational films during which I passed out repeatedly at the sight of blood, and spoke with a few medical specialists in the field--largely to ascertain how they manage not to pass out in surgery every time they expose the pulsing internal organs of a patient.
Ryan Perry, the lead of Your Heart Belongs to Me, is 34, wealthy from the Internet social-networking site that he created, with an ideal life ahead of him. Then he learns he suffers from cardiomyopathy and will die within a year if he does not undergo a heart transplant. The procedure is successful, but a year later he begins to receive gifts--such as a heart-shaped locket--with the message 'Your heart belongs to me. I want it back.'
Although it might seem to be a ghost story, Your Heart Belongs to Me is something else entirely. In addition to being a thriller with a medical procedure as a key element, it is an unusual love story. Those who have never read my books--we know who you are--might be surprised to learn that more often than not, a love story is part of the mix. In a romantic relationship, we're vulnerable; and when a character in a novel is vulnerable, we are more likely to worry about him or her and to relate more intimately to the story. Furthermore, people in love have something precious to lose, and in their sometimes desperate efforts to hold fast to that love, they reveal themselves more profoundly than they might otherwise.
In the early years of my career--or what we here in Koontzland call 'the long slog'--publishers resisted me when I wanted to mix genres. These days, my publisher encourages me to pursue fresh ways of telling stories. Consequently, Your Heart Belongs to Me is a suspense novel and love story with a thread of the supernatural weaving through it, set against a backdrop of medicine and medical mystery, concerning certain issues of ethics that are timeless--and others that are unique to our time. And I promise you that the medical detail is not so graphic that you will pass out.
A Q&A with Dean Koontz
Q: Your Heart Belongs to Me is very suspenseful but at the same time an affecting love story. How difficult was this to pull off?
A: Well, life is full of suspense and, if we're lucky, it's full of love as well. From minute to minute and day to day, we never know what will happen to us, good or bad, so suspense is the fundamental condition of existence. That doesn't change when we fall in love or when we love a child or a sibling or a great dog. In fact, the more we love, the more we have to lose, which puts a sharper edge on the suspense in life and in Your Heart Belongs to Me. Ryan Perry, the lead of the story, enjoys self-made wealth and good health and the love of a good woman--so when all that starts to slip away from him, it's actually easier for me to move readers to the edge of their seats and keep them there.
Q: Your books are full of details about how things work in the real world--like life in a monastery in Brother Odd, the management of a great Bel Air estate and the intricacies of police work in The Face, Your Heart Belongs to Me is rich with details about medical conditions and heart transplants. Since you don't specialize in one kind of novel, how do you learn about all these different things? Do you engage in a lot of Internet research?
A: I never go on-line. My writing schedule and other obligations keep me busy 18/7. The other six hours, I sleep. I know that I am a potentially obsessive personality and that it's easy to become obsessed with one aspect or another of the Internet, until hours a day are consumed by it. Therefore, I stay away. I do most of my research from books and publications, and by conducting interviews with specialists in whatever fields my story will touch upon. One of my assistants is on-line, and in a pinch, if I can't turn up a fact I need, she can get it for me. As a high-school and college student, I hated research and libraries. I always shamelessly made up the facts in reports that I wrote, and cited nonexistent books by nonexistent writers in my footnotes. And I always got away with it! But as a novelist, I've been surprised to find that I greatly enjoy doing research. I think the difference is--in school, they told me what I had to learn, and I bristled at authority; when I chose the subject, I proved to be an industrious autodidact.
Q: Your hero in Your Heart Belongs to Me, Ryan Perry, is different from your other heroes, like Odd Thomas and Mitchell Rafferty and Tim Carrier. What was it about the story you were telling in Your Heart Belongs to Me that required this change?
A: Most of my heroes come from ordinary occupations--a fry cook, a baker, a mason, a gardener, a bartender--which makes them like many of my friends in real life. But Ryan Perry in Your Heart Belongs to Me has made a couple hundred million from an Internet business. For this story, I needed a hero who, at the opening, has everything: he's wealthy, he has a beautiful girlfriend whom he loves and who loves him, he essentially leads a life of leisure at 34, he's vigorous and handsome and charming.... And then everything that really matters begins to slip away from him. He had to be at the top in order to be at risk of a long fall. As he begins to think that some people in his life are involved in a conspiracy to kill him, he needed to be a man of exceptional resources to pursue that investigation.
Q: Where did the idea for Your Heart Belongs to Me come from?
A: I was on the phone with a friend, talking about a smorgasbord of things, when the subject of heart transplants came up, and he told me something, an anecdote, that astonished me. Before I hung up, I had spun that small fact into a story that I couldn't wait to write. I've already made it clear to him that he gets no royalties! Story ideas have come to me from lines in songs, from a scrap of overheard conversation, from just about everywhere. And sometimes a story pops into my head, and I have no idea what the source of it was. Thank God this keeps happening; otherwise I might have to learn an honest trade like plumbing.
Q: What is subsequent for you? Another Odd Thomas novel?
A: There will be three more Odd Thomas novels, but my book for spring 2009 is not one of them. It's titled The Other Side of the Woods and is in the vein of Life Expectancy. I'm having great fun with it. Even when writing is hard, I always have fun with it. In fact, the harder it is, the more fun it is, because the challenge is what makes the work worthwhile.
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Rated by buyers 
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I just finished Your Heart Belongs To Me. Having read it right after the rather mediocre Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind, the difference in writing quality was like night and day. Koontz is one of the few non-fantasy/SF popular authors that I read, since his writing ability these days is phenomenal. Not all of his books are masterpieces of writing, but Your Heart Belongs to Me *is*. It's a book that takes the readers along on a ride of melancholy, paranoia, and uncertainty -- as the main character himself does. He flits between genres, so you're never sure if you're reading a thriller, a ghost story, some sort of sci-fi tale, a love story, a tragedy, or if the answer to the mystery is ghosts or a conspiracy theory, or nothing -- with perhaps the main character being crazy and making the whole thing up in his head. Since the reader can't pigeonhole it, and put the novel into a labeled box saying "Ghost Story" or "Unreliable Narrator", it takes the reader out of his comfort zone and places him right there beside the main character as he tries to figure out if he's crazy, or if there's something sinister going on, or something else entirely.
Koontz does a masterful job crafting a mood throughout the piece, once the plot gets going, and the mood is the only thing which ties the book together, as the events in the book are so uncertain, like in real life, neither the main character nor the reader can be sure that a new development is tied in with the main plot at all -- if there is a main plot at all. On top of that, Koontz works in a healthy dose of metafiction, by having the main character's girlfriend be an author, who explains what it is that she's trying to accomplish as an author: subtext, and subtext beneath the subtext. If you apply what the girlfriend says to the book that You the Reader are reading, you can pick up on even more themes and messages from Koontz. Really brilliant stuff, even though people who normally critically analyze his books (which my mom and I do from time to time) might think it might just be the author getting tired of people missing out on his own subtext in his works. So it's subtext about subtext. But it works.
Finally, as I was reading it, I noticed he used a lot more literary references then he normally does in his works. He opens the book with Yeats' The Second Coming (which sort of sets the mood for the book), and then has scattered Poe references throughout the book. A patient at the doctor's worried about the conqueror worm. Sounds tap tap tapping and rap rap rapping at the windowsill. Church bells, iron bells, tolling tolling tolling, rolling upon the human heart a stone... as he lies waiting for surgery. I missed the reference to The City in the Sea. How do I know I missed it? The book points out some of its own references to Poe, in another case of metafiction -- but not all of them (for example, it doesn't note its own reference to the Conqueror Worm) -- some of the characters try reciting The Raven in one scene. Having memorized both it and The Conqueror Worm, I was amused that the characters couldn't remember the whole thing. =) Further, when talking about Poe, Koontz starts using many of the same alliteration and assonance tricks that Poe did. Subtle stuff.
Anyhow, don't let the cover art throw you off -- it looks like a cheesy romance novel cover -- it's an amazing work.
Rated by buyers 
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I have been a Dean Koontz reader and fan for his entire career. While I generally enjoyed most of his earlier work, I have found his recent efforts to be spottier and more often appealing to narrower "niche" segments depending on his sub-genre focus for that particular book. "Your Heart Belongs To Me" was a disappointment for me that got worse rather than better after reflection and contemplation. This novel is at once a thriller, an extended character study, a complicated love story, and a medical procedural.
Internet entrepreneur, Ryan Perry, seemingly has the world in his pocket when he is suddenly diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, an incurable heart condition that suggests he has less than a year to live unless he receives a heart transplant. He gets on the donor list and awaits his life changing notification while going through a period of paranoia which makes him suspicious of all around him including his beautiful lover, Samatha Reach, and his loyal house staff. One subtext of this novel is the doors that big money can open that maybe would have been better closed--such as Ryan's ability to change doctors on a whim, hire the finest detectives and security agents, and to generally indulge his whims and desires.
Ryan does receive his new heart and crosses paths with a mysterious nurse who seems particularly comforting and oracle-like. Upon regaining his health, Ryan is determined to reclaim Samantha's love and to pick up where he left off. Unfortunately, he receives a string of "heart" type gifts along with cryptic messages that indicate he is being stalked by a woman determined to reclaim his new heart. Who is she and why is she after him? Can his wealth and his power secure his safety from her? And why does Samantha no longer love him in the same way and even seems to pity him in some way? All this leads to a climax that is both a plausible yet a porous payoff for a read of over 330 pages.
This novel is really one long extended character study of Ryan Perry with very little action and minimal plot development. Actually it feels more like a novella fluffed up with steroids to make it novel length--but so much of the fluff is filler and superfluous developments. It drags through three-quarters of its length before finally getting to any action and plot fulfillment. Ryan is continually seeking a personal elusive truth that hangs just out of his reach throughout the novel, even though he encounters multiple clues as to what it is; indeed, it seems he is always chasing the clue to nowhere.
Lastly, the characters in "Your Heart Belongs To Me" did not generate any deep interest in me--I found myself not particularly caring for any of them, especially Ryan. The antagonist, such as he is, is a very minor character who ultimately is lost in the plot, as is Lily, the stalker. What happens to them, or are we supposed to care? Oh, and as in most Koontz novels, there is the ever present dog in this story although he doesn't appear until the final pages and is no part of the plot.
Rated by buyers 
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Having tossed aside Koontz's novels since "The Husband", it was with great hestitation that I purchased this novel. I was curious to see how he would rebound after the "Odd" series and his previous tedious dog story.
I was surprised and happy to find I actually finished this one and while it lagged in several places, it held my interest. Koontz defintely did his homework about heart transplants and cardiomyopathy so for those interested in such it gave a glimpse of the disease. I was a bit confused with some of the early apparitions and other strange happenings in his home but when I put that aside I found I wanted to know the outcome.
All in all, this novel is more like the "old" Dean Koontz although somewhat flawed and confusing at times.
My rating is based on the moral of his story; one we all need to take to heart in these times.
Rated by buyers 
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A rare miss by Dean Koontz. Far too much buildup and not enough payoff.
Rated by buyers -
What is amazing about Dean Koontz is his chameleon like qualities. He can be so many different things and can evoke so many different emotions.
But yet there is a common thread running through most of his work. It seems as though he takes an innocent, ordinary person, puts them into a nearly impossible situation and watches them wiggle their way out of it. Whether it's Billy Wiles in Velocity, Michael Rafferty in The Husband, Spencer Grant in Dark Rivers of the Heart, Timothy Carrier in The Good Guy, Ryan Kelly in Your Heart Belongs to Me or even Odd Thomas himself, Mr. Koontz takes each of them, gives them a situation that would destroy most of us, puts them under the microscope and watches them work it through to the end. In a way, it's like a sadistic puppeteer, cutting the strings and watching his creations take their very first tentative steps on their own. It's what most of us love you for, Dean. Because most of us wish we were sadistic puppeteers, too.
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