Title: Transplanted Love
Author: Sherry Derr-Wille
Published in 2004 by Wings
ePress, Inc.
Genre: Contemporary/Medical Romance
ISBN: 1-59088-241-5
“Believe me, I know what lies in store for you”. Lori Carter is a special person. A very special person indeed. The twenty-six year old brunette with ice blue eyes and trim body appears to be your average woman. But those who know her well know she’s more than just average. You see, Lori Carter is a kidney transplant recipient and those people who know her very well are extremely protective of her. Except for one person – Mike Fuller. Her ex-fiancé. When Lori was first diagnosed with kidney failure, not only did she have to cope with the loss of her kidney function, she had to also deal with the destruction of her dreams. Mike Fuller, her love, and her future husband, walked out without a backward glance. In his eyes, she had become the Bionic Woman with no quality of life. It’s no wonder that she has become leery of introducing her uniqueness to the people she meets.
It’s been four years since Lori has been on a date and now she’s being asked to go on a blind one. Not that you could call it a blind date in the proper sense. Her friends, Jan and Skip Farney, are hosting a small dinner party to introduce the new guy from the office and Lori is to be his dinner companion. There is one condition, however, and that is no one is to mention anything about her transplantation to her date. To her surprise, Lori feels an instant connection to this man. Is it love at first sight? After a flurry of dates in less than a week, she still hasn’t told him everything about herself, and she realises that he’s getting too close to the truth. That’s the crux of the problem. Lori wants him to get to know her before he learns about her transplant, but by not telling him, she’s not allowing him to form his own opinions. Will he have second thoughts? Will she scare him away? Or will he accept that it hasn’t altered the person she really is?
“Love her for who she is and what she is, not for why she is”. At six foot two with sandy brown hair and brown eyes, Kent Saunders can be described in three words – drop dead gorgeous. He doesn’t go out much apart from his bi-monthly visits to his parents. It’s not because he’s shy. He’s still trying to come to terms with his twin’s death. To say he was mortified when medical personnel evicted him from Kate’s bedside to harvest her organs is a huge understatement. If anything, his belief in the practice of organ transplantation as being unnatural is solidified into a conviction. In his opinion, doctors have no right to choose who can live and who can die. Who died and made them God? Nothing anybody can say or do will change his stance on this. Or can it?
Three months after transferring to Prairie du Lac to take up his position at Castwells, Kent is invited to a small dinner party to introduce him as the new guy in the office. He is horrified to learn that a dinner companion has already been arranged for him, leaving his imagination to conjure up some less than appealing images. Having his blind date pointed out to him before the formal introductions, Kent found he couldn’t stop his eyes from constantly straying to look at her. He is pleasantly surprised to learn that he is attracted to the stunning woman. To his consternation, unanswered questions arose during the evening, and subsequent dates, niggling at the back of his mind, preventing him from putting a finger on it. Why did everyone refer to her as a special person, with the emphasis on special? Why did everyone appear to be over-protective of her? What’s going on with her?
Kent and Lori embark on a roller coaster ride fraught full of emotions and false convictions. Kent needs to overcome the grief that still has him in its grip before he can accept what has happened to, and is a part of, Lori. In coming to terms with Lori’s uniqueness, is her learning to love her for who she is, or why she is? Can he differentiate between the two before it’s too late? There is no doubt that Lori has been in a lot of pain over the past four years – emotionally and physically. She is strong, intelligent and as independent as she can be. Building a relationship with Kent isn’t easy, especially so when you have over-protective friends and family constantly looking over your shoulder. It’s even more difficult when her ex-fiancé returns to the scene, interfering as best as he can. Luckily for Kent and Lori, they receive help and a guiding hand from an unexpected quarter, introduced by the only way Transplanted Love can. But is it really luck?
Sherry Derr-Wille expertly takes us on a journey that holds a number of surprises and unexpected twists. Even the title, Transplanted Love, has a number of connotations applied to it, not just the initial one because of the book’s genre. Transplanted love accurately portrays the gamut of emotions one experiences when dealing with the touchy subject of organ harvesting and transplantation. Sherry Derr-Wille draws from personal experience, and as a result is able to enlighten the reader quite accurately the processes and procedures involved. Published by Wings ePress, this book is quite a good read. Available in March, make sure you get a copy and read it. If it doesn’t inspire you to become an organ donor, grab the nearest stethoscope and use it to check if you still have a heart that’s beating.
Enjoy!
Tanya
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