I’ve always loved to read books my whole life. Thrillers, horrors, classics, and romance are my favorites. This year I read a lot of books, but I found myself liking them decently enough to finish it, but not really loving it. But one day I was at B&N, and was looking for a new book by an author I rlly loved. Before I found it, though, I also came across Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah. I’m not full of money so I had to choose between the series I know I’d love and an unfamilliar author…and I ended up choosing Firefly Lane. And I’m so glad that I did.
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I don’t know if it was the setting in the 70’s and 80’s in Seattle that I could really relate to or the idea of opposite friends attracting to become a lifelong friendship, but I absolutely loved the book. I think I finished it in about 4 days. The ending with Kate’s death also made me cry, considering my mom also had breast cancer years ago (she is a survivor though!). The book was just so relatable I felt like Tully and Kate could be real people that I knew.
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For years I’ve always been scared by the idea of death. It was most prominent when both of my parents had cancer. I never experienced great loss before (my grandparents died either before I was born or when I was too young to remember) and I was scared to see it happen to people I loved, of how scary it looked and would feel. The idea of not existing anymore, of being sick and dying, always freaked me out.
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Maybe it’s how the author described everything in the novel, wrote everything in how Kate accepted her terminal cancer and spent a lot of time with her family, but when I finished it I felt a lot less fearful of the idea of death. It made me feel like death is just something we all have to go through, and death doesn’t always equate immense suffering and pain. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how the end of the book made me feel. It made me feel sad but at the same time peaceful, like when you die you get the reward of peace and not suffering anymore.
by vintagepop