Kristan Higgins is well known
for her feel good novels so Pack Up the Moon is somewhat a
departure for her. The book follows two
journeys, one from diagnosis to death of a young wife and her husband’s from profound
grief to living again. At times heartbreaking and sometimes laugh out loud
funny, you won’t be able to put this one down.
Lauren and Joshua Park are very
much in love and newly married when Lauren is diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Lauren knows that Joshua, who is on the autism spectrum, will be devastated
once she is gone and not know how to handle things without her. So she sets out to write a series of letters
to Joshua, to be delivered one a month for the first year after her death. In
each Lauren gives Joshua very explicit instructions about a tack she wants him
to perform. It is by performing these tasks that Joshua meets new people and
learns to open up and live again.
Lauren is a letter writer. She
also has written a series of letters to her deceased father to keep him up to
date on what he is missing. It is through these letters the reader learns how
Lauren is dealing with her diagnosis, how she and Joshua met and about their
life together. Each chapter centers around one of her letters.
The characters in the book are
fully developed, having both flaws and eccentricities. Although the book begins
with Lauren’s funeral and her story is told in past tense, she comes alive on
the pages. The secondary characters are just
as complex and quirky.
4.34 stars on Goodreads, 4.7 on
Amazon
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