This should have been marketed as a memoir of a young hospice nurse; it's about half memoir and half stories from her line of work. It's beautifully written and absolutely heart-breaking, but it's not what you would expect based on the cover and blurbs, which is unfair to Vlahos.

Each chapter introduces a new patient and the life lessons that Hadley learned that we should all take away from this book.

Hug your loved ones tight. Eat the cake. Put your feet in the sand. It doesn't matter what you think happens when you die -- it only matters how you live.