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crazy-loca-blog · 4 years

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Personal thoughts on Open Heart, Book 2

Note: As the title says, these are just personal opinions on Choices books and chapters. Of course, you may agree or disagree with them, I only use this platform to express my thoughts on what I read every week and what I’d like to see in the next chapters, because none of my friends play Choices so I have no one to comment the books with.

It’s been a while since I started writing this post, I actually remember saying I would post it months ago. But then things escalated in such a negative way between some people, that I said “well, maybe it’s not the best moment to post this”. So now that the book will be back, I thought it might be a good time to revisit it.

Of course, as this was written before the second hiatus, it’s been done with the original plot in mind, and I don’t read spoilers and the book is supposedly being rewritten, it may be full of mistakes… it just took me so long to write it, that I don’t want it to go to waste! hahaha

I’ve read a lot of people complaining about the plot of Open Heart 2 being all over the place, and some people are worried about the “too many subplots” this book has. Well, sure, there might be A LOT going on in this book, but when you analyze what almost every character is going through (emphasis in “almost”), you’ll realize that they all have one thing in common: they’re all dealing with their past. Also, with a third book confirmed, I don’t think everything is going to find its closure in Book 2. But let’s analyze our gang (they are in alphabetic order, as usual):

Aurora Emery: This girl is so damaged that it hurts. She certainly had trust issues during college and she’s reliving them all over again. Of course, being Harper Emery’s niece is not easy when you go to medical school and become a doctor. Not only people have high expectations on your performance, they also want to be friends with you and you just don’t know if it’s because of your aunt or because they genuinely care about you. Tobias is not making things easier for her either (I’m so ready to punch this guy if he hurts her!), and our MC has been an ass to her lately as well. She truly needs to know there is a light at the end of the tunnel and I’m so waiting for the MC to have a chance to apologize because what they did was the stupidest thing I’ve seen them do so far.

Bryce Lahela: Even though I’m in love with this guy (I always say he’d be my BFF in real life), we knew since day 1 that he was hiding something. Well, it took us over a book to discover that his family has a very, very shady past that ended up affecting not only Bryce, but also his little sister Keiki. Of course, discovering that your parents are criminals when you’re a teenager mustn’t be easy, and Keiki escaping because she’s basically living the same hell as Bryce went through in the past has only made him relive some old feelings that he wanted to be forgotten. Now that the cat is out of the bag, I can only think of some healing process for him that will probably not have its closure in Book 2, but in Book 3.

Elijah Green: Our boy Elijah has always declared himself a “nerd”. So, it doesn’t surprise me at all the fact that he had problems making friends while growing up. Also, due to his condition and what we know about his past, I bet his parents were super overprotective, making things harder for him. That’s why he is having a hard time when trying to keep boundaries with Sothy, his intern. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be friends, not at all (not only Ines and Zaid consider the MC “a friend”, but my MC is romancing Ethan, soo…). But he certainly tries too hard to be accepted (and not judged) by his intern, to the point that it becomes a risk for them as doctors.

Esme Ortega: Our new intern looks like she’s a tough girl, but it only took us one diamond scene to discover what’s behind her attitude. Her life has been hard and she’s basically facing the world alone since she was 14. Even though this apparently was a topic that was addressed and solved in the same scene, it’s very clear that she sees herself in her teen patient with leukemia. It’s very possible that her parents never told her that they were illegal immigrants, so she can’t stand lying to that kid. She knows how it feels. She knows he’s not a kid anymore and that his parents lying to him will only cause pain in the future. Hopefully we’ll be able to go deeper in her background during the rest of Book 2 or in Book 3.

Ethan Ramsey: Ethan is facing not only one, but two conflicts. The first one is a personal one: his mom left him and Alan (his dad) 25 years ago. Now she is suddenly back in their lives for some reason that we still need to figure out. Ethan believes she’s back because she needs money, and he might be right. There is also this idea that she’s actually sick and she needs Ethan’s help. This could also be pretty accurate. I actually think it’s something in between (maybe some stepbrother or stepsister he doesn’t know about needs medical care but they can’t afford it). The other one is professional: with the money problems in Edenbrook, he’s feeling all the pressure of having to make a choice between attending rich people who can afford their full treatments and being loyal to Naveen’s original purpose when he created the team (that is, to care about people who can’t afford their treatments). My thought is that, in the end, both his family issues and his career in the diagnostics team will be crossed and that this will become a turning point in the book (because yes, we still don’t have that “huge case” as we did have with Naveen’s case in Book 1).

Jackie Varma: Jackie’s issue actually hits home. College debts are a huge issue in my country, and I can tell almost every single one of my classmates is facing them now, even though we graduated a long time ago. It’s pretty common to see families struggling to help their kids to attend university and you can’t imagine how grateful I am that my hard work paid off and got me a scholarship that relieved that burden at home. So I can totally see Jackie in this situation: coming from a low income family who didn’t only become a doctor because she loves it, but also because she saw it as a chance to give her family a better life… and this isn’t happening right now. But she is actually doing something about it already, so she’ll probably be the first one to have her “burden from the past issue” solved, she just seems to need that raise that all residents are supposed to get… at least for now.

Rafael Aveiro: Our Rafael (who’s not going to die and who still is a LI in my opinion) surprised us when he introduced us to his significant other, Sora. I mean… what happened in that two-month period between Book 1 and Book 2? This is one of those times when I desperately need a diamond scene for him to explain everything. Because it doesn’t matter if he is your LI or not, he doesn’t seem convinced about this “new” relationship and you can’t change my mind. Also, the fact that he’s been taking more risks than usual is giving me some weird vibes (maybe he’s depressed and he’s been hiding it?). I’m pretty sure there’s something we don’t know yet… and I’m pretty sure that his conflict at the end of the book (if he is your LI) will be to decide between “staying in the past” (with Sora) and “moving into the future” (with the MC).

Sienna Trinh: Our sweetheart has had little screen time in this book, but that time has been enough to realize she’s having some serious issues, to the point that some people think she’s the one who’ll be dying because of how depressed she shows herself. We all remember that Sienna used to have a boyfriend certain specimen in her life, and how she dumped him in Book 1. Well, toxic relationships are not limited to love life, and that’s the case with her. She’s been repeating all the same patterns with her new resident, Mitch. He manipulates her and he’s basically abusing of her good will… just like certain ***hole she used to date it in the past.

Kyra Santana: I did leave Kyra for the end on purpose. Since the end of Book 1 I’ve been saying that she has to die at some point of the series, basically because we must be realistic here guys and we can’t be in denial: no matter how much we love her, our girl only has 10% chances of surviving cancer and before the hiatus, things were getting worse for her. Based on this… have you noticed how Kyra is the only character in the series (besides our MC) who’s not carrying some burden from her past? Instead, she just lives the present and she barely mentions her future, except in two cases: when she’s talking to the MC about her job interview, and when she says that her treatment “soon will be over”. To me, THIS SPEAK VOLUMES, GUYS!

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