Cameron was struck down with a virus that is destroying his heart. Without a heart transplant, he has just months to live, and his quality of life is deteriorating every day. All he wants to do is live, and live as his friends do.

When offered a radical new treatment, involving the transplant of a genetically altered pig's heart, he must face not only his own fears of death, his confusion over the ethical decisions but also the reaction of his family, friends, and the public.

Deceptively simple, this is a very nicely written book exploring the themes of death and the ethics of cloning and animal experimentation. Despite being from a young teenager's view, it holds enough within it to keep an adult reader interested, and I raced through it. It should be said that this was a reread from my own teenage years, but I still got as much out of it, and was almost in tears at one point.

Malorie Blackman is a well known YA writer, but this is one of her lesser known books. Nevertheless, it deserves to be noticed perhaps more than it has been.

From page 16:

I gave the water one last, vicious kick, then stood up slowly. I couldn't bear to listen to any more. It was as if there was a glass wall separating me from the rest of the world. All I could do was watch and envy my friends as they swam and dived and did whatever they wanted without a care in the world.