Reading a cancer memoir when you have two loved ones up against it and your mother has just died (of non-cancer related causes) can be a lot, but it's probably also a good idea, to help you center the sick person in your personal illness drama. Having sick friends and family members is weird, but to be expected when you're in your 50s, as I am. However, the storyteller here began exhibiting symptoms of what was eventually diagnosed as leukemia, in her senior year of college.

It's a powerful story, full of recognizable observations like

Grief is a ghost that visits without warning. It comes in the night and rips you from your sleep. It fills your chest with shards of glass. It interrupts you mid-laugh when you're at a party, chastising you that, just for a moment, you've forgotten. It haunts you until it becomes a part of you, shadowing you breath for breath.

When you're a sick person, a lot of your friends are also sick people, and inevitably some of them don't make it.

And here's an image I'm sharing just because I think it's clever

the Tetons serrate the horizon

Jaouad is an excellent writer. I would have given the book five stars, but it's at least 100 pages too long. I get that the length is the length because cancer was a long, drawn out, struggle, and the long denouement felt important for closure, but I stand by saying that the book is at least 100 pages too long.