Ok let me start by saying I heard this book was going to make me sob but when I was 250 pages in and didn’t even feel my eyes getting wet, I assumed I was aged out of the group that would get emotional over this. HOWEVER, did I spend 5 minutes clinging to my husband sobbing after reading the last 3 pages? Absolutely.

This story in its purest form is about grief: how you deal with grief, how grief impacts your relationships and your thoughts processes and how clinging on to the past stops you from moving on and creating/continuing meaningful connections you have in the present. Did I hurt for Julie? Yes, but I didn’t particularly like her. Her decisions bothered me and because we’re reading from her perspective, her grief is prioritized. It was irritating to have her basically come to terms with “oh yea, a lot of people actually really love Sam and this is probably hitting them very hard as well.” Again, we focus on her grief which makes sense, but idk just felt like she wanted a monopoly on grieving Sam.

Anyway, rant over. TLDR: this book is as sad as they say it is. Have a support human/animal on standby when you finish.