How would you live your life if you got a second chance?

Chloe is an overachiever. She gets good grades, is on the track team, and is ready to accept her admittance to a prestigious college. But one day while practicing on the track field, her vision gets blurry, chest pain hits, and she collapses. Waking up in a hospital made her think heavily about what her future might hold. She soon finds out that she needs a heart transplant and she needs one fast. They bump her up the list.

After her transplant, everything changes for her. She finds herself interested in things that she never was before, like surfing. While stuck in summer school, she dreams of being on the beach and being in the ocean. Her instructor, Kai is another reason why she wants to be on the beach.

As more time passes, she starts breaking rules that she hasn’t before and finds herself skipping school to spend more time with Kai. But things are happening that are making her second guess everything. She keeps having nightmares of a motorcycle accident, seeing someone crying by her bedside while she was in the hospital, and knowing how to ride a motorcycle when she’s never driven one before. Things just aren’t adding up.

Is Chloe losing her mind? Or is she internally connecting to the person from who she got the heart?

The first eighty percent of this book is Chloe learning to live her life after having a heart transplant and then it took an odd turn that I wasn’t expecting. It made me reread parts of this book to help me better understand what was happening and it was stellar. I thought about how this was going to play out and for the most part, I was right but there was something that I didn’t catch that shocked me. My mind is still playing the last twenty percent of this book over and over again.

Everything I Thought I Knew was a great read. It deeply connects you with Chloe and her life before and after her transplant. It ended in a way where some questions weren’t answered but it doesn’t take away from the story. What we need more of is Kai! This story makes you take a long look at your own life. Are you living it to the fullest? And being the best you possible? It’s never too late to change for the better.