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.

The subject matter was super interesting, but Rosenbloom inserted herself and her opinions into every page, which made it less interesting.

I loved meeting characters that Hamish knew. And that CLIFFHANGER ENDING.

What a terrifying time it is to be an American.

It's slow to start and probably contains more backstory than it needs, but I got so invested in Livira and Evar that the further I went, the faster I read. At its heart, this is a book that asks us if we can bear the cost of mercy.

Literary fiction frosted in horror? Yes please every day of the week.

This is probably better than I'm giving it credit for (I do love a found family, after all) but I kept zoning out completely during the audiobook, and realizing I didn't care enough to rewind.