Two lines on a test. One choice that will change everything.
After months of trying, Sarah finally sees what she has been hoping for: a positive pregnancy test. With her husband Scott by her side and her best friend Anna just a phone call away, she lets herself believe that this is the beginning of the life she has always imagined. Every prenatal appointment, every heartbeat on the monitor, draws her deeper into a love she never knew was possible.
But Anna carries her own hidden scars. Behind her cheerful support and her chaotic life wrangling a teenager, she guards painful memories of pregnancies that ended in loss. Memories that quietly shape the way she sees every choice a mother can face. When a routine ultrasound reveals a devastating diagnosis, Sarah is forced to confront an impossible decision, one that will test her marriage, her faith in herself, and the friendship she depends on most.
Heartbeat is a deeply human story about what it means to be pregnant in America today, told through two women whose love for each other must survive the one thing they cannot agree on. In a world where the most personal choices have become political battlegrounds, how far will friendship bend before it breaks?
Autorentext
Ashley Marie is a women's fiction author whose debut novel, Heartbeat, was inspired by the real experiences of women who faced the devastating decision to terminate a pregnancy at 20 weeks. Moved by how little support the healthcare system offered in their darkest moments, she set out to bring humanity to a deeply politicized issue.