Being the new lady in a divorced father's life is bound to be challenging, but no sooner have Grace and Victor got engaged than Victor's ex-wife dies suddenly. The couple have to break the news to Victor's two children, moody schoolkids, as well as coping with the loss. Grace runs a shelter for abused women and doesn't want children of her own, putting career first, but it looks as though she's going to be a replacement mother whether the kids want it or not.

HEART LIKE MINE looks back through time at Kelli, Victor's first wife, seeing the marriage from her viewpoint and their life in Seattle as matters change between them. Ava, Victor's daughter, also tells her tale and tries to come to terms with the loss of her mother. Grace had to help rear a brother thirteen years younger, and really just wanted to be herself for a while, but she can't shirk this responsibility. Ava, looking through her mother's belongings, unearths a family secret and old unhappiness. Victor is running a busy restaurant and has little spare time.

I found the tale slow to start, with Amy Hatvany giving us an entire day in young Ava's self-obsessed school life. However it soon became clear that this was to establish a contrast with her life after the loss of her mother. The flicking back and forth between characters and times is reminiscent of The Time Traveller's Wife and we do feel that Kelli had been hard-done-by for much of her life, coming from a stern religious household where her father was prepared to beat her for missing classes at aged fourteen.

In the constant rotation between Kelli, Ava and Grace I would actually have liked to see the viewpoint of young Max, Victor's son, who seemed like a nice kid but got little time in the story.

Less a romance and more a thoughtful look at life and why we turn out as we do, HEART LIKE MINE will interest readers of contemporary women's fiction and followers of Amy Hatvany, who has written three previous books.