Review: My Heart Will Find You: A Novel

My Heart Will Find You: A Novel by Jude Deveraux
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 

For the first time, Etta realized the seriousness of what was happening. 

Etta is in Kansas City when a global pandemic hits and finds herself stranded as people and states shut their doors in fear. Walking through a neighborhood on a way to try another hotel, a kind older gentleman offers her a place to stay, and his son in Denver begs her to be his new caretaker over the phone. Getting a good vibe from the man and out of options, Etta stays. While the current world is at a standstill, Etta goes on an incredible journey. 

Would she dream again? 

My Heart Will Find You was a time travel story that had some Wizard of Oz to it. The beginning introduces us to Etta and how when her mother died, she became the family's new caretaker. At one point Etta, her father, sister, and sister's husband all lived in the same house. As Etta's sister moved out a little while go, Etta is missing being in charge of everything, so it's a time of transition. When Etta ends up at the kind older gentleman's house, Henry, a few more characters are thrown at us as we get a look at Henry's life; the son Ben lives in Denver with his wife, who is going into labor, Freddy, the woman who gives vegetables to her neighbors, Sally the singing neighbor, and a few others. It was a good amount of characters to get to know and when Etta falls asleep only to have an incredibly vivid dream of being a mail order bride in 1871 Kansas, the contemporary characters we just meet, all end up in her dream world, but with different names. 

“Etta,” Henry said slowly, “I've written many books about the Old West, but I've never heard of anyone named Wyatt Earp.” 

Etta shares her dream with Henry and, as a historian who has written many books on the American West, he's intrigued with the actual history and connections he is recognizing from Etta's retelling. After a few nights of sleeping, Etta suddenly finds herself again in the dream world. She gets to know her new husband, Max, the second biggest landowner in Kansas, Max's sister Alice, who is Etta's sister Alicia in her “real” world, and some of the townspeople. Etta begins to think that she is being sent back in time to help the people she recognizes from her real world, recognizing Alicia as Alice, has her knowing that Alice should be matched up with the blacksmith, because he is Alicia's husband in Etta's contemporary world. Etta repeats this match making and it was a lot of the two people being introduced and instantly falling for each other. 

Even in dreams, she took over other people's lives. 

Talking with Henry after a dream, Etta realizes that what she does in the past, can alter the future, she ends up having to make sure Wyatt Earp escapes in the past so that the future will know his name. This has Etta realizing they aren't simply dreams she's having and she begins to think that she has to set everyone's lives right in the past, that she recognizes from her contemporary world. This doesn't leave much room for the romance between Etta and Max to develop, they end up just kind of “I love you” later in the story. Their first under the stars scene (bedroom scene) was a one line and though they get intimate again, those get extended to a paragraph, at most. The emotionally and physically the romance just wasn't there for me in this one. 

“I'm afraid I'll be taken from you.” 

He didn't ask what that meant, but then, he was growing used to the odd things she said. “If you are, then you'll just have to find me. I'll wait for you forever.” 

After setting things to rights the way she thought would make everyone happy and realizing she loved Max, Etta learns that Henry was keeping a secret from her. The ending introduces a new character in the contemporary world and if you've read A Knight in Shining Armor, well, you're in for a similar ending. The concept was interesting with the Wizard of Oz aspect of “and you were there and you were there!”, even though the first half was somewhat of a jumble of names but the romance wasn't there for me. I do hope that someone out there got to escape the first months of Covid by time traveling and finding love, this story was nice fanciful thought to that.

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