Search - Your Heart Belongs to Me

Loving all books, Dean Koontz, I'm not sure that I can say the same for this one. Normally, all of his books immediately draw me into the story. This one failed to do that until Chapter 51. Still, I would recommend it to anyone who can hold out until approximately the aforementioned chapter.

I have been reading Koontz's books for more than 15 years. He is my favorite author and I whenever I read one of his books I have to read it nonstop no matter how late I need to stay up to finish. I save every book of his that I buy, but I will be giving this one away. It was the only one of his books where I sat there at the end and went Huh? The description of the book does not really describe what the book is about. Koontz should stick to what he is good at. This was not a novel of suspense but rather an analysis of one man's pysche and motivations. It took more than 180 pages for anything even remotely unusual to happen!!! What a bore.

I agree that this book started out great, but kind of lost steam.

I love, adore, can't live without Koontz' books, but this one just wasn't what I expect from him.

Granted, it is still a good book, and worth reading, but not up to the intensity that you normally get from Koontz.

At the beginning Ryan, a very well to do man, falls madly in love with Samantha, a woman nine years his junior. She appears to feel the same way and the relationship is going along swimmingly until one day he fears he's having a heart attack and visits the doctor. It turns out he has a heart ailment that may or may not have been caused by poison and begins to suspect his love of an unthinkable betrayal. Ugh, as if having a deadly heart condition wasn't enough of a worry!

Ryan's nosy search into Samantha's past gets him thinking about all sorts of conspiracies involving her mother, some death doctor and Samantha's deceased twin sister. This paranoia bit really maddened me. Instead of talking with Samantha, the love of his live, about any of this he decides to do it all on his own and keep it from her even after he's decided she's not a money grubbing murderess. At this point, I don't like this guy much at all. Koontz spends a huge amount of time describing this Ryan's tedious, spoiled lifestyle when he should have been developing him into a likable character.

Ryan ends up needing a heart transplant (hopefully, it'll improve his emotional handling of his lover!), gets one and the book then skips an entire year. Now he's estranged from Samantha and is being stalked by a young woman who claims his heart belongs to her. His paranoia sets in again and the rest of the book is spent with him chasing down this big plot about his new heart.

This book will not go down as my favorite Koontz novel. It mostly annoyed me, the character Ryan was such a spoiled, pampered, egotistic, opinionated priss (especially when it came to his own flawed parents) that it was hard to stomach at times. After reading the ending I figure Koontz did this to prove a point but honestly if I weren't listening to this as an audiobook I would've put it down and never picked it up again.

Okay, so not his best work, but I couldn't put it down; stayed up 'til 3:00A to finish parts 2 and 3. Not the ending I expected, and felt almost as if Koontz plotted and pondered deeply through the entire book, but wasn't sure how to finish it. So it just sort of...ended. But I was still gripped by the subtext and knew that in true Koontz fashion something good had to come of all the drama and trauma. Suspenseful, and to be honest, the only part I was able to figure out almost from the first mention of her name, was Ismay. Koontz can keep you guessing in his books. Great writer.

This book was hard to get in to. It was ok once I finally got in to it a little more. Not the typical Koontz book.