RaveBookreporterAs quickly as I was swept away by Lizzie’s love affair with Dante and her friendship with Grey, it was her mothering of Etta—against the realities of time, location and sickness—that took my breath away. As Dante says in one of the novel’s most powerful scenes, \'Grief is a gift. Grief means that you threw your heart into life and lived it fiercely. Suffering is a gift.\' Reading this book is by no means an act of suffering, but there is plenty of grief and, as Dante explains it, plenty of heart, life and fierceness to match it. A powerful story about choosing to live and the courage it takes to do so, dying or not, and the extravagance of a life well-lived ... without a doubt the best book of summer 2021. I cannot wait to see what else Mary Bly has up her sleeve.
