Review for Pack Up the Moon by Kristan Higgins

 

Pack Up the Moon by  Kristan Higgins 

Kindle Edition, 480 pages

Publication: June 8th 2021 by Berkley

Genre:  Womens Fiction, Chick Lit, Romance, Contemporary, Adult Fiction

 

Every month, a letter. That's what Lauren decides to leave her husband when she finds out she's dying. Each month, she gives Josh a letter containing a task to help him face this first year without her, leading him on a heartrending, beautiful, often humorous journey to find happiness again in this new novel from the New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins.

Joshua and Lauren are the perfect couple. Newly married, they're wildly in love, each on a successful and rewarding career path. Then Lauren is diagnosed with a terminal illness.

As Lauren's disease progresses, Joshua struggles to make the most of the time he has left with his wife and to come to terms with his future--a future without the only woman he's ever loved. He's so consumed with finding a way to avoid the inevitable ending that he never imagines his life after Lauren.

But Lauren has a plan to keep her husband moving forward. A plan hidden in the letters she leaves him. In those letters, one for every month in the year after her death, Lauren leads Joshua on a journey through pain, anger, and denial. It's a journey that will take Joshua from his attempt at a dinner party for family and friends to getting rid of their bed...from a visit with a psychic medium to a kiss with a woman who isn't Lauren. As his grief makes room for laughter and new relationships, Joshua learns Lauren's most valuable lesson: The path to happiness doesn't follow a straight line.

Sometimes heartbreaking, often funny, and always uplifting, this novel from New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins illuminates how life's greatest joys are often hiding in plain sight. 

My Thoughts…Pack Up the Moon is such a sad story.   A romance that flourishes, grows, and then before it has a chance to have a long life there is a horrible twist.   One of the persons learns that they are not going to live a long life, they are going to die well before their time, and they will leave behind the person who has made their heartbeat, their soul shine, and their entire life better. 

Lauren is the person who has found out she is going to die.   Her illness cannot be cured.   I enjoyed seeing how she found the silver lining, she decides that she will live each day to the fullest, find the happiness in each minute, and spend as much time as possible with her husband.  The way that she guided her husband, Joshua, through the first year after her death was heartwarming and heart breaking.  With each part of Joshua’s journey after losing Lauren I could feel the love that she had for him and the hope that she had that he would find a way to be happy again and hopefully find love again.  

Kristan Higgins wrote a book that I felt was different from her other books that I have read but I really liked it.   I liked how many feelings were shared, how real the characters were, and how much family and friendship mean to Lauren.   Pick up your own copy of this book and open your heart to a heartbreaking, heartwarming, sad and happy story. 

**Thank you Danielle Keir at Berkley for a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. 

Add to your MUST-READ list on Goodreads

 

Meet Kristan Higgins… Kristan Higgins is the New York Times, USA TODAY, Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of 19 novels, which have been translated into more than two dozen languages and sold millions of copies worldwide. Her books have received dozens of awards and accolades, including starred reviews from Kirkus, The New York Journal of Books, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal , People and Booklist. Her books regularly appear on the lists for best novels of the year. Kristan is also a cohost of the Crappy Friends podcast, which discusses the often complex dynamics of female friendships, with her friend and fellow writer, Joss Dey.

 

The proud descendant of a butcher and a laundress, Kristan lives in Connecticut with her heroic firefighter husband. They own several badly behaved pets and are often visited by their entertaining and long-lashed children.