Evie Sanders is pretty good at heeding that gnawing feeling she gets when trouble rears its head—or at least she used to be. Things change when she meets Quinn Harrison one morning after class. Evie would never do anything intentionally to hurt her long-distance boyfriend or jeopardize their relationship, but she finds it increasingly difficult to resist Quinn. Just when things can’t seem to get any more complicated, Evie is involved in a fatal car accident. Yet, her death marks a new beginning—and her new existence as an immortal. It’s not long before Evie and Quinn’s paths cross again, and she finds herself trying to walk a fine line between bending the rules she must now obey and breaking them.
4 out of 5 stars
Borrowed Heart is the first ebook in the Evie Sanders series by indie author Linda Lamberson.
Evie Sanders gets a prediction from a psychic that she will die before her 19th birthday. Since then she has pushed it down, but it starts coming back to her at college. Unconsciously, it has made her stick to what she knows instead of finding what makes her happy. At the same time, she meets Quinn. It's an instant attraction, but Evie already has a boyfriend at another school, the safe one that she's had for years, and she's not the kind of girl that cheats. Still, she and Quinn share a kiss that is amazing but makes her feel guilty. In order to sort out her feelings, she makes a surprise visit to her boyfriend. She takes the long drive in winter, prepared to throw herself on the mercy of her boyfriend and beg his forgiveness. On the way back, Evie's involved in a fatal car accident and dies.
Evie's "life" isn't over, though. She's one of the few who die with their mind and soul still connected. Those people become Shepherds, immortals who protect humans targeted by Servants (a type of demon) until the threat has passed. She maintains her personality but the memory of her past has been erased and one of the rules of her new life is that she doesn't seek out information on who she was. Usually that's not a big issue for a Shepherd because they don't get assigned people they knew. Halfway through her training, though, Evie is assigned to protect Quinn from an immediate threat to his life. Something has pushed the two of them back together and Evie has to decide how far she is willing to break the rules to be with him.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. The story was interesting and it was deeper than I was expecting. When I read the description, I thought of the Immortals series by Alyson Noel, but it wasn't as juvenile. It was less silly and more realistic, even though it's a supernatural story. I think that the author did a good job creating her main characters. Despite their True Love status, they actually fight and have regular problems. Their problems aren't all caused by some outside force, though there is that too. Their relationship also felt more real and less over the top. They also both had periods of being likeable and annoying, like a real person. Neither Quinn or Evie were perfect.
I also thought that the age of the characters was unique. I don't think I've read many books where the characters are a college age, but not really considered 20-somethings. The only issue here for me was that Quinn really seemed older than that on many occasions.
One thing I didn't like was the prologue. It was only a snippet of something that happened later in the story, which isn't what a prologue is supposed to be.
I do think that the story could have been tighter. There was a lot of talk when Evie becomes a Shepherd- pages and pages of rule after rule and training after training. There was also a lot of daily minutia while Evie and Quinn were together. The action of the overall story didn't really start until much later in the book. In the end, though, there was enough of a carrot dangling that I want to know what is going to happen. I definitely think it is worth getting through the parts of the book that drag with dialogue and daily activity. When I start getting books again, the next in the Evie Sanders series is going to be one of the first.
*Picture and Description from Goodreads
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