How to Save a Life
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Joel’s heart stops as the rest of the world welcomes the start of a new century. What happens next will change the course of three people’s lives forever . . .
It’s nearly midnight on the eve of the millennium when eighteen-year-old Joel’s heart stops. A school friend, Kerry, performs CPR for almost twenty exhausting minutes, ultimately saving Joel’s life, while her best friend Tim freezes, unable to help.
That moment of life and death changes the course of all three lives over the next two decades: each time Kerry, Joel and Tim believe they’ve found love, discovered their vocation, or simply moved on, their lives collide again.
Structured around the four simple steps involved in CPR, Eva Carter’s How to Save a Life is both a love story and an exploration of what it means to be brave – because bravery isn’t just about life or death decisions; it’s also about how to keep on living afterwards . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Carter (a pseudonym for English author Kate Harrison) serves up a heartfelt if uneven love story that turns on a love triangle and a health crisis. On New Year's Eve in 1999, a group of Brighton, England, high school classmates gather to celebrate. Golden boy Joel, already on track for a career in the Premier League, collapses during a pickup game. Kerry (who harbors a secret crush on Joel) and Tim (who has a secret crush on Kerry) both hope to become doctors, and have already undergone first response training. But while Kerry remains coolheaded and successfully performs CPR, Tim is paralyzed by inaction—only to accept most of the credit after Joel survives. Joel, who suffers from a previously unknown heart ailment, grows bitter when he learns his soccer aspirations are over for good. Kerry and Tim, too, are shaped both personally and professionally by how each chose to respond in Joel's moment of crisis. This dynamic continues to play out over the course of the next 18 years, as romantic relationships are complicated by addiction, infidelity, and jealousy, and one leg of the love triangle eventually falls off. While the novel's earlier portions plod along and its last quarter feels hurried, Carter delivers plenty of drama. Readers will champion these characters' efforts to find themselves.
