Cute ( )

My favorite book is sick lit, so when I figured this one would be, too, I was intrigued. This book needed to be two hundred pages shorter and Stella and her plot could have been easily cut. There were so many characters, stories and subplots all in this one novel, that I couldn't keep them straight and actually stopped trying. There's Hope, a young woman with cystic fibrosis and Ben, her Manic Pixie Dream Boy. She compares his drunkenness, especially vomit caused by it, to her cystic fibrosis and its attendant body fluids, a lot. Weird. Stella is a healthcare provider who interacts with Hope a lot, and who has hated her husband Vincent ever since he came home a wounded vet. Since now he can't have sex the way they normally do, and he can't go for a run. She's obsessed with their past sex life, which she describes using extremely purple prose. Every time she was on the page, I skimmed if not outright skipped.

The device used for chapter/POV transitions and opening and ending the book, is letters being written from hospice patients to loved ones, except for a few 'nasty neighbor' letters mostly. It could have been charming and interesting, but fifty pages into the book, I no longer cared. Hugh is a forgettable character who blames himself for missing his dead mother who died twenty years ago. His cat is more interesting than he is, and I quickly figured out all three of the cat's favorite places to be. There's a layer or two of sexism throughout the whole book, but I got bored enough around page a hundred, that I was only mildly annoyed. There's a remark about nurses who befriend patients being weird and--please. It happens. Oh, I wanted the book to be over when I read that.

If two hundred pages from the book had originally been cut and Stella and her subplot done, we could have opened with: Hope and Issy. Issy worsening, and Hope recovering and the contrast and strain on their friendship. Everyone else's story continuing. And the book could have had Issy's death closer to the end of the book, and it would have been sadder than it actually was. Her letter was interesting in itself and even a little sad. We could then subtly shift to Hope and Manic Pixie Dream Boy. Instead, Issy dies less than halfway through the book, and there's sure a lot of book left. It just went on and on and on. But I'm cooped up in my apartment and was hoping reading would ease my anxiety, so I kept reading.

The second half of the book was predictable melodrama, complete with a 'parent who died twenty years ago is not dead and has never stopped thinking of you' cliche, with a side of infodumps shoved into long monologues. Walls of text! All I could think of was not-great actors delivering five-minute monologues every time someone spoke more than a sentence, and I was unhappy. I sighed happily when the book ended, though. ( )

So much to this book. CF, hospice, PTSD, death, letters and amazing people. Lots of crying. ( )

Nicely done, multifaceted novel. Coleman hits some false notes in the letters scattered throughout the book, but she mostly gets them right, and she crafts absorbing and affecting stories for main characters Stella, Hope, and Hugh. Three and a half stars. ( )

What an appealing bunch of characters Coleman created! I wanted to know more about each one of them and Coleman did not disappoint. Now I have to go back and read her earlier books. ( )