No. of pages: 510
Rating: 8/10
Synopsis: Dr Abby DiMatteo - a second-year surgical student in Boston Bayside's elite cardiac team - is about to make a decision that will jeopardize her career. A car-crash victim's healthy heart is ready to be harvested, having been cross-matched to a private patient, forty-six year-old Nina Voss. Instead Abby makes sure the transplant goes to a dying seventeen-year-old boy who is also a perfect match. The repercussions leave her plagued with self-doubt. Suddenly a new heart appears, and the transplant is completed - but Abby makes a terrible discovery. The new heart has not come through the right channels. Defying the hospital's demands for silence, Abby begins her own investigation that reveals an intricate and murderous chain of deceptions ...
Review: Abby is a second year surgical intern at Bayside medical center, and is finally getting to where she wants to be in her career. So when a heart becomes available she assumes it will go to the deathly ill 17 year old boy who is crashing multiple times a day and has minimal time left to live. Instead, she's told it'll be going to a 46 year old woman, who is a private patient. Suspicious that she's only getting it because of her money, Abby makes sure the heart gets transplanted to the boy instead. But when another suitable heart becomes immediately available and the woman gets transplanted, Abby has to wonder where it came from, because after all, they couldn't possibly be getting hearts illegally....could they?
Although not one of her best thrillers, I did enjoy this book, especially the heart transplant storyline which was interesting to read about. You figure out within pages of the beginning what the whole storyline will be, but there are a few bits that fit together more as the story goes on. I did find some of the characters hard to connect with, but I immediately fell in love with Yakov, he seemed so damaged, yet he was the character with the most personality and loveability. Abby was a strong, determined young woman, who was willing to do whatever it took to find out what was going on, even at the risk to herself, which I liked. It's always good to read books where there's a strong female lead. As with her other books, Gerritsen draws on her medical knowledge and that makes the books so much more realistic and enjoyable to read. Overall, Harvest is decent, but as it was her first thriller, it's not quite as good as her other books, such as her Rizzoli/Isles series.
