Some people might not care for this book (the Amazon reviews support that contention), because it’s different from Dean Koontz’ other work. But if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noticed that Koontz frequently changes genres, and mixes and matches genres within a story. He doesn’t like to do the same thing twice (with the exception of the Odd Thomas and Frankenstein books, which just prove that he refuses to be predictable even in his unpredictability). With Your Heart Belongs to Me he has (in my opinion), not only broken new genre ground, but produced his best writing to date.
This book sings. Again and again, I paused in my reading just to savor how beautifully the author had expressed himself. The usual pattern for a popular writer, as far as I’ve observed, is to start out really good, with a book he’s probably labored over for years, and then to become increasingly sloppy, as his publisher’s demands for several books a year force him to churn stuff out and send it away in the rough. But Koontz is an infinitely better writer today than he was when he started, and the best of his recent work reaches (I think) the level of literary fiction. That’s certainly true of Your Heart Belongs to Me.
The blurb on the back told me that this was the story of Ryan Perry, an internet social networking billionaire who’s had a heart transplant and starts getting threatening messages from someone telling him, “You’re heart belongs to me.”
But in fact, Koontz takes more than half of the book to set that situation up. We see Ryan as a rich, healthy, happy young man who lives the American dream. He has an enormous house, surfs whenever he wants to, and is dating a gorgeous young woman. Then he starts experiencing physical symptoms which turn out to indicate, not a heart attack, but a congenital cardiac enlargement condition. He begins to be suspicious (the condition might have been caused by poisoning). He employs a security company to investigate various people who might want him dead. On a whim, he takes his business from the cardiologist he’s been seeing, and switches to a more famous, more expensive specialist. And along the way he has occasional visions—or hallucinations—that seem to be communicating a message. But it’s a message he can’t understand.
Finally his name comes up on the international transplant waiting list he’s on, and he gets his surgery. His recovery is good. But his girlfriend breaks up with him. (She says he knows why, but he can’t figure it out.) Then the messages start appearing—a bag of candy hearts, all with the same message, left on his pillow in a room that ought to be locked and secure. A heart-shaped pendant left on his pillow. A sudden knife attack, accompanied by a whispered threat.
It isn’t until he’s kidnapped and threatened with death that Ryan begins to acknowledge the things he’s been purposely overlooking, and to understand the meaning of the warnings he’s had. “It’s all about the subtext,” his girlfriend, a writer, once told him.
The ending is different from that of any Koontz novel I recall. But it was a good ending, entirely satisfying in its way.
I recommend Your Heart Belongs to Me highly. You’ll find yourself searching your own heart.
That’s really interesting. You’re doing a good job of encouraging me to read Koontz.
It did have a good ending, but for some reason I didn’t particularly care for the book. I went back instead and completed reading the Frankenstein series. Interesting that Koontz cites to C.S. Lewis and the pernicious influence of “scientism.” Koontz is an interesting commentator on our society, regardles of the quality of his writing.
The only Koontz I’ve read was The Darkest Evening of the Year. There was a bit too much weirdness for my taste. I found the Golden Retriever worship a bit odd. Moreover, the interconnectedness of everything reminded me of reading one of Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently novels. Was Darkest Evening representative of the rest of Koontz’s body of work?
It’s hard to say that anything is characteristically Koontz, except for weird story lines, quirky (often funny) dialogue and characters, and (a recent development) almost-human golden retrievers. Although the only g.r. in YHBTM had only a bit part, so even that isn’t predictable. And Christian messages have been increasingly present or implied.
I didn’t like the ending I found it a bit too convenient. It felt poorly thought out. The story has potentials ;themes to exploit .
I like the fact that alot was left unexplained. I’m still trying to figure out why Sam and Ryan broke up.
This is a story of a man who for the longest time fooled himself into thinking he had everything under control.A man who thought life only existed in his little world.
But then he is pulled into a realm where everything is out of his control. A realm where he must wait for things to reveal themselves to him.
His refusal to ‘let things happen’ as Samantha advises him to, brings him reckoning. He is accidentally pulled into something shady and he is oblivious to it until the life that he had fought to keep is once again tampered with.
In situations like his ,the best thing to do is what Cathy Sienna advises ‘offer yourself up as the victim ‘. Because we are in fact victims and sometimes that is the difference between leading a life that’s meaningful and one that’s empty and wasted.
I’ve read alot of bad reviews about this book but this is a pretty good one.
I encourage people to read this book ,try reading it in the abstract .There’s a lot to carry away from it.The most important to me being ‘the observance of patterns in life’.