THE MISSING PIECE by Catherine Miller

Broken Heart Syndrome: A sudden and acute form of heart failure, brought on by emotional or physical distress

After years of studying cardiac medicine, thirty-one-year-old Keisha knows the heart inside out. She knows the average heartrate for each age group, she can name every valve, and she can tell you exactly how much blood it pumps daily.

The one thing she doesn’t know is how to fall in love. And nor does she want to. The secret her tattoo covers is a reminder that the best way to protect a heart is to never let it feel in the first place…

Seventy-nine-year-old Clive is Subject Five in Keisha’s latest research project. He’s been in love since he was seventeen, ever since he met Nancy at a tea dance. But last night, his beloved wife was killed. Suddenly, he has no one to waltz with. He has woken up in hospital, a widower diagnosed with Broken Heart Syndrome.

These strangers, brought together by a broken heart, must face up to the truth of their pasts. Can Clive teach his new friend that until you’ve loved, you haven’t lived? And can Keisha help him see that it’s never too late for a second chance?

This is such a heart breaking story that will make you shed some tears and want to push characters towards love and healing. I fell in love with Keisha and her way of coping with loss but found myself wanting to shout at her at times and show her the obvious. Love is not felt through medicine but through the butterflies in your stomach. You can’t just know it’s there from the first time you lay your eyes on someone. Love grows and one day you wake up and know it’s there, it’s real and it’s true

As for Clive…. oh, how I cried and hoped in his healing. How I got so close to him, wanting to help and get to the bottom of it all. I stopped reading and thought about meeting an old man like him and if I would have done the same things as Keisha did.

Would you help a stranger unconditionally? Would you be able to give up on yourself just to see someone else happy?

The Missing Piece is all about that and more. It is a story of loss, forgiveness, hope and love. It is about how you fall, pick yourself up and seek happiness again. Once you start crying you won’t stop. Your heart will brake in million pieces but you’ll be able to put them back and smile at the end.

Catherine Miller found the perfect ending for her story and managed to bring back hope into our hearts. It is heart breaking and up lifting in the same time and you have to be a master of the pen to be able to get away with this. I am definitely going to follow her and looking forward to more stories.