Wow, I still can't believe BEFORE I GO is a debut novel.
Colleen Oakley
just ripped my heart out and yet, I couldn't stop reading.
I read this in one
sitting and before I knew it, I was finished. It's been
three years that
Daisy's cancer has been in remission. But on that night
when they should
be celebrating three years, cancer free her doctors tell
her, her cancer has
returned. Not only is it back, but it's stage four this
time. The doctor also
tells her she only has months to live. What? How can this
be? She is only
twenty seven and now she is dealing with cancer again for
the second time!
This is not fair at all and of course she is devastated!
How can she even
tell her husband that it is back?
As Daisy comes to accept the fact that she is going to die
she comes up
with an idea. Her husband needs someone to take care of
him. Jack is
absent minded, messy, and very unorganized. How is he
ever going to
survive on his own? Daisy sets out on a quest to find
Jack a new wife. At
first Daisy feels good about doing this but then it starts
to hurt her.....how
can she do this? She wants to introduce Jack to the
perfect woman for
him, Pamela but it turns out that they already know each
other. Daisy
never thought that finding a new love for Jack was going
to hurt so badly.
I knew BEFORE I GO was going to be sad, but I had no idea
I would be
balling my eyes out reading it. Colleen Oakley wrote a
story that made me
think about if I could do something like what Daisy is
doing the whole time I
was reading. Anytime a story makes me think, I know it is
one I'm not going
to forget. Every chapter is more heartbreaking than the
last one. You can
see Daisy grieving, getting angrier, pushing Jack away,
trying to find her
replacement, getting jealous when someone comes in the
picture...and
getting sicker and dying a little bit more with every
page.
BEFORE I GO is a serious book about a tragic disease. If
light and fluffy is
your thing then look elsewhere. If you can handle a well
written emotional
story that makes you wonder if you could handle a
situation like this, then
read this story! You won't be sorry! I finished Daisy's
story with tears in my
eyes and a huge lump in my throat that would not go away.
And then my
heart was shredded, broken in a million pieces. The last
chapter and every single one of those million pieces
broke into even tinier pieces and I cried like I haven't
cried in years. I
finished the book, crying, turned off my Ipad, still
crying, took a deep breath
and started to cry harder than before. I'm looking forward
to reading more
by Colleen Oakley!
A heart-wrenching debut novel in the bestselling tradition of P.S. I Love You about a young woman with breast cancer who undertakes a mission to find a new wife for her husband before she passes away. Twenty-seven-year-old Daisy already beat breast cancer three years ago. How can this be happening to her again? On the eve of what was supposed to be a triumphant “Cancerversary” with her husband Jack to celebrate three years of being cancer-free, Daisy suffers a devastating blow: her doctor tells her that the cancer is back, but this time it’s an aggressive stage four diagnosis. She may have as few as four months left to live. Death is a frightening prospect—but not because she’s afraid for herself. She’s terrified of what will happen to her brilliant but otherwise charmingly helpless husband when she’s no longer there to take care of him. It’s this fear that keeps her up at night, until she stumbles on the solution: she has to find him another wife. With a singular determination, Daisy scouts local parks and coffee shops and online dating sites looking for Jack’s perfect match. But the further she gets on her quest, the more she questions the sanity of her plan. As the thought of her husband with another woman becomes all too real, Daisy’s forced to decide what’s more important in the short amount of time she has left: her husband’s happiness—or her own?