For 34-year-old Ryan Perry, life is great. A hugely successful Internet entrepreneur and a true rags-to-riches story, he recently sold his company for millions. He lives in a California mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean. His staff caters to his every demand. He has been named one of America’s 100 most eligible bachelors by People magazine and is waiting for his girlfriend, Samantha, to accept his marriage proposal.

Then comes a day that will forever change his life. What starts as an assumed anxiety attack while surfing leads to a diagnosis of cardiomyopathy, a congenital heart defect and, essentially, a death sentence at 34. Until Ryan gets lucky and receives a donor heart.

One year later, his life is back on track. Until a woman identical to the organ donor shows up. And wants her heart back.

The mass market paperback edition of Koontz’s latest novel was released two weeks ago. Once again, this perennial #1 NYT Bestseller doesn’t disappoint.

As Koontz aptly described his novel, “It might appear to be a ghost story, [but] Your Heart Belongs to Me is something else entirely.” As he so often does, Koontz mixes a suspenseful, thrilling plot with a love story to create a literary work that cannot be pigeonholed into a specific genre. “Life is full of suspense and, if we’re lucky, it’s full of love as well,” Koontz says.

Samantha, an aspiring novelist, will introduce to the book the notion of subtext—layers of meaning. That’s well-suited, since Your Heart Belongs to Me consists, in and of itself, of several layers of meaning.

The novel didn’t enjoy good ratings from critics, but I found it among Koontz’s most endearing novels. As usual, the king of suspense leaves his readers guessing. Though the prose is at times a bit beneath the standard Koontz has set and the plot becomes a little strung out at times, there’s a lesson to be taken from the story, and it’s thought-provoking as well. Koontz’s novels are becoming increasingly so, on both counts.

I’ve said in the past that Koontz has progressed over the years into an author who can rival Stephen King’s gift for character development. The same is true with Your Heart Belongs to Me. And in Ryan and Samantha, we have Koontz’s most endearing couple since Odd Thomas and Stormy Llewellyn.