I’m pretty sure it’s not secret to any of you that I am in a time of great upheaval right now. Things are just…rough. They’ll get better, but right now they just suck, and that’s how it is. So, you’d think I’d be turning my attention to funny stuff: light-hearted flicks, fluff books and just such as this. And, really, I would have. Except that I promised to review this book, Irreplaceable, before the poop hit the fan, and I got sprayed with all that foul smelling stuff.

They sayOk, I say that a well written book can pull you out of yourself, teach you something about life. I fought myself to read this one because it is a very painful story. Seriously, it begins and ends painfully and the entire middle is full of pain. But that’s just the way life is sometimes, and even in the midst of the pain, the story is beautiful, both in life and in this book. Life is beautiful, even when it hurts, because it is life. And this book is beautiful because it speaks a truth even though it is fiction.

Irreplaceable is well written, the characters are fully formed, very human, and the events are realistic, even in their unfathomableness. On the surface, it’s the story of an organ donor and what happens to her heart, but that short description doesn’t do the book justice. It is intensely emotional, and I cried when I read the last sentence: that’s just how they say hello. That one line sealed the book for me, because I actually have a leave taking ritual with a friend of mine–something we’ve never discussed, and I’m not even sure they know it exists, but it does for me, and that’s how I know Stephen Lovely is writing from a heart that understands motivations and desires and can adequately portray that in words that paint pictures for the mind. Irreplaceable is his first novel, and I’ll be looking to see what he writes next.