I loved this one!

Things We Know by Heart is my first Jessi Kirby book and it has successfully convinced me I need to read more of her stories.

Quinn’s boyfriend died their junior year and she has been frozen since the night it happened. As part of her mourning process, and a way to reconnect with him, Quinn reaches out to all of the donor recipients. When the person who received his heart, Colton Thomas, never responds, Quinn goes online to hunt him down. As she digs deeper into who he is, Quinn decides to find him and an accidental run in turns into more than she thought it would be.

I liked Quinn. From the first chapter I could feel the pain she was going through and although I don’t agree with her methods, I completely understand why she did what she did. Kirby yanked me into Quinn’s life and made me feel everything she was going through. The pain of loss, the frustration of not getting a response from Colton, and the fear that she would never get past it all…it was all right there and made me unable to put this book down.

Colton has had a rough time and ever since he got his new heart, he has just wanted to forget all about the bad things that have happened. Unfortunately for him, that isn’t very realistic. Not only does he have to be careful about what he does, but he also has daily meds to take and he will never be able to just a normal kid. With that in mind, when he meets Quinn, it is clear he sees this as an opportunity to be more than just the kid with the bad heart.

I loved seeing the friendship/relationship develop between Quinn and Colton. They both have things they need to overcome and neither of them was being very forthcoming about who they were and what they were going through. It was completely understandable that when things came to a head for these two that they had to pause and figure out who they wanted to be. With that said, there were definitely some swoony parts that I loved and made me love Colton that much more.

The secondary characters that Kirby created in this story were another great piece of the story. I loved Quinn’s grandmother and her sister, Ryan, was wonderful too. Ryan was the one person who called Quinn out on the things she was doing and tried to get her to understand that it was ok for her to move forward with her life. As Quinn faces the reality of her actions, Ryan is the one who helps her figure out what she needs to do, even though Ryan is working through some things of her own.

Definitely check this one out if you are looking for a wonderful story and well-developed characters. Kirby made me love everything about this book and I will definitely be reading her other stories as soon as I can.

Thank you to Harper for the review copy!