Author: Julie Lawson Timmer
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Publish Date: September 9, 2014
Source: Library
What's the Story?:
From Goodreads.com: "Mara Nichols, a successful lawyer, and devoted wife and adoptive mother, has recently been diagnosed with a terminal disease. Scott Coffman, a middle school teacher, has been fostering an eight-year-old boy while the boy’s mother serves a jail sentence. Scott and Mara both have five days left until they must say good-bye to the ones they love the most. Through their stories, Julie Lawson Timmer explores the individual limits of human endurance, the power of relationships, and that sometimes loving someone means holding on, and sometimes it means letting go."
My Two Cents:
In the incredibly powerful and heart wrenching "Five Days Left," we meet Mara and Scott. Mara is a successful woman who is facing the thought of what will happen to her as she deals with a devastating degenerative disease. Scott, on the other hand, is dealing with having to return the boy that he is been fostering and loves back to his mother who is in jail. Both situations are incredibly difficult. They're both situations that I hope that I never find myself in. The author takes an unflinching look at the decisions that both of the characters make in the last five days that they have left.
The key to why I enjoyed this book so much is that the other had a really good way of bringing the characters to life and giving me some insight into what they were thinking and what they were going through. This book will stick with me for a long time and these characters will be stuck in my head. Both characters have to make decisions, which allows the readers to see their innermost thoughts and what really makes them tick.
It takes a lot for a book to make me cry. Books can make me sad but only the most powerful books can make me actually shed tears. This book definitely made me cry and feel all sorts of emotions. I love books that make you think long after you close the book. The author had a great way of making me, as a reader, really feel for both of these characters and put myself in their shoes. You keep hoping that everything is going to be for it okay for these characters because you get to know them so well but you know that even books don't always have happy endings. The writing of the book kept me guessing and kept me hoping until the very end. This is definitely a good read!
I read this one around the time it was released last year. I loved it. You should add The Things We Keep by Sally Hepworth to your list. I just finished it and thought it compared well to this one.
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