Heart Trouble by Jae

Heart Trouble
by Jae
Pages: 312
Date: September 21 2016
Publisher: Ylva Publishing
Series: None though related to Jae's Hollywood series.

Review
Rating: 5.5 out of 5.0
Read: August 23 2016

*I received this book from Ylva Publishing for an honest review*

This was/is a great book - from beginning to end. I laughed, I cried (mostly from laughing), and had great pleasure from reading this book.

This is one of those books that is hard to write a review for. Almost everything I could think to write seems spoiler-y; the plot, the romance, the family dynamic; everything.

Laleh Samadi comes from a large Persian American family (her parents came over from Iran; I'm not actually sure if Laleh was born here or there). She, Laleh, works as a waitress at her aunt's restaurant, and is quite straight. Though she has some lesbian friends - like two couples from other Jae books (mostly Jill, though her girlfriend Crash, and friends Grace and . . . whatever Grace's girlfriend's name also make appearances (Lauren?); Jill's role was actually larger than I kind of expected, she actually was a friend of Laleh's instead of some cameo like drop in - like say Grace who, as far as I recall, appeared twice - once at a movie opening, and once at a party - her biggest scene involved being kissed and blushing). Jill, as some may or may not recall, is the woman from Jae's Hollywood series with MS - and the one who played the doctor in the 'Shaken to the Core' film (pulling in, indirectly, another book and another of Jae's series).

Lelah meets the other lead in this story in an interesting way - by collapsing in an emergency room and being saved from death by one Dr. Hope Finlay. In a normal course of events, Hope and Lelah would never have meet again after Lelah left the ER area (conceivably they might have bumped into each other when Lelah moved into the other parts of the hospital, but that happened only once before). Neither were likely to run into each other normally - Lelah is/was straight and while she didn't exactly live in a Persian enclave, Hope kind of did - not live in a Persian enclave, but live in a work one - Hope being the kind of woman who lived more to work long hours in an emergency room - the kind whose only friend is a fellow doctor, and her condo looks like a showroom because she's almost never there.

So yes, they never otherwise would have run into each other at all. But they did - because Lelah had a heart issue, and ended up in the ER. They never would have moved beyond doctor patient, though, without an extra little bit of out-of-this-world weirdness. For, while attempting to jump start Lelah's heart (technically it was 'running', it just was 'stuck in the wrong gear' that would have lead to death), some of those paddle thingies were used. Defibrillators. And by a fluke of fate the charge ended up connecting doctor and patient - as in something cause the patient's arm to jerk up and slam into the doctor. A rookie mistake, as Hope mentioned several times.

Even then their fates were on a path to shaking themselves off never to see the other again but for that out of this world thingie I referenced earlier. Normally getting some extra volts of electricity run through your body doesn't do anything more than create some tingling that might last a short while. Doesn't normally do what happened in this book - create a link - a real link, between Hope and Lelah. The kind wherein Hope suddenly had a taste for Persian food and accidentally ends at Lelah's restaurant (though that could have happened anyway - not to the same degree, but in the sense that the good doctor might have had 'Persian' in their mind, from saving a Persian American, and might have had Persian pop up in their mind one day when thinking of what to eat for food). The link, though, was much stronger than that and dived into fantasy land.

I'm no expert on Persians, so I cannot say anything other than that I liked what was shown in this book. Was it realistic? Real? No idea. But it was a nice variation on characters. The interactions of the two who link up felt quite real - both becoming solid fully formed characters in this book.

This is one of those fluffy sweet humorous fun, erotic breaks from reality type of books. One specific aspect was somewhat expected and somewhat saddened me when it came to pass, though what unfolded after this unexplained vague event occurred was quite good and fun and probably for the best. I kind of liked, bah I can't say without going into spoiler land. The kind where I do not even wish to use spoiler tags to state.

August 24 2016