Kristan Higgins

"Twelve letters. That's what Lauren decides to leave her husband when she finds out she's dying. Twelve letters to see him through the first year without her, and to lead him on a heartrending, beautiful, often humorous journey to find happiness again"--

Pack Up the Moon

raia – inactive

For a second, he felt his wife, felt her love wrap around him. She had promised to always be with him, and he believed her. I love you, he thought. I always will.

He was, and is, and always would be, the love of her life.

“It’s okay if you go,” he whispered. “You’ve fought enough. I love you. I’ll always love you, Lauren. Rest now, honey. I’m right here with you. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

'Thank you for our life together. I was so happy. I loved you with all my heart, Joshua Park.

I’ll see you again someday, my darling, wonderful husband.'

Then he saw a movement in the far corner of the living room, and his heart jolted. For just one second, he saw his wife, wearing the long pink dress she’d worn so often that Cape Cod summer. Her hair was loose, and she wasn’t wearing her cannula.

He didn’t look away. He didn’t even breathe, hoping the moment would last forever. Then his eyes swam with tears, and when he blinked, she was gone.

“I don’t want time to pass,” Josh admitted in a low voice, not looking up. “Every day is a step away from her.”

He bent his head. I miss you, he thought. I miss you so much. I don’t want to live without you anymore, Lauren. I’ve done a good job, haven’t I? Please come back. The letters are running out, and I need you. I can’t live without you anymore. It’s too hard.

Even if it was her ghost—and he didn’t believe in ghosts. Anything. Anything from her.

He would never find anyone like her again. He would never try. Once you’d had a love like that, it would be futile to try to replicate it. Everything else would be a hollow imitation.

He prayed for sleep, for a dream about his wife, but his eyes stayed open.

He had stopped checking her side of the bed in the middle of the night. Stopped wondering if she was already up. He didn’t call her name. He didn’t check his watch, wondering if it was time for her meds or a walk or some breathing exercises. He didn’t accidentally reach for two plates at dinnertime, whenever that was, and when he realized he didn’t, he deliberately set out two plates, because the acceptance of her absence was worse than the forgetting of her death.

Last week, he’d awakened already knowing she was gone. He didn’t reach out for her. That in itself ripped his heart apart all over again. Two months and one week was all it took for his muscles and instinct to adjust.

It’s an impossibility. Nothing will be the same. Nothing ever should be the same. The world is ruined by her death.

“Tell me you’ll be okay without me.”

She said nothing, and Josh was quiet a long moment, the only sound the rhythm of the ocean waves against the shore. “I will be,” he said, his voice rough. “I’ll be grateful for every day that I got to be your husband.”

And all Josh wanted was for them to be a normal couple, in love, enjoying each other.

Not a couple with a clock ticking. Not a couple where one would be left alone.

If he was very still, he could picture this as a different scene. His wife was down the hall, taking a shower. She’d take forever drying her hair and change at least twice. She’d put on makeup, because she loved makeup. He could almost hear her rustling around, singing under her breath.

When she was alive, he wasn’t dead inside.

For the first time, it hit him that he’d never be a father. Not to Lauren’s kids. He’d always hoped that her IPF could be stopped, that she’d live decades more, and he wouldn’t give up on the idea of kids.

But time had run out. There would be no kids. No genetic memory of her, no seeing her smile on a child’s face, no hearing a laugh that was just like hers.

Lauren’s shampoo and shower gel were still on the shelf. He took the cap off, inhaled, then found himself lying on the shower floor, racked with the pain of losing her, the sounds coming from his mouth terrifying and unstoppable. 

He’d jerk awake at night to check her, reaching for her side of the bed, worried about her breathing, then realize, nope, she was dead. He got up in the morning and put the kettle on for her tea. One night, he called down the hall for her before remembering. Sometimes he woke up and wondered if he’d dreamed their entire marriage.

He was forty-five minutes into cleaning before he realized he was cleaning up for her. In case she came home.

He would love her the rest of his life, and he knew, with absolute certainty, that she would love him the rest of hers.

this book makes me SOB, it’s been MONTHS and i still can’t bring myself to finish it :(

alexandra

“Lauren’s shampoo and shower gel were still on the shelf. He took the cap off, inhaled, then found himself lying on the shower floor, racked with the pain of losing her, the sounds coming from his mouth terrifying and unstoppable. He eventually fell asleep there, exhausted and wrung out, and woke up only when the water had turned frigid.”

sarina

Isabella 

cried so much i physically have no tears left in me

Nouran Hazem

It’s 4 am and I’m writing this with tears streaming down my face.. I can’t process how absolutely incredibly heartbreaking and bittersweet this book is.. The love I have for Josh and Lauren and how incredibly written this was can’t be expressed in words. The found family and friendships formed and the stages of grief were heart wrenching.. I was sobbing through the last 20% of this book and cried so much throughout the whole book.. but it does have a bittersweet ending which healed and broke my heart simultaneously.. it’s safe to say I can’t possibly move on from them…

“I . . . love you,” she whispered.
“I love you, too. With all my heart. With my all lungs and liver and pancreas.”
“Kidneys . . .”
“And kidneys. Both of them.”

i’ve never felt so unwell after reading a book. like i’ve been sobbing to the point i genuinely feel sick.. but in the best way?

this was just so incredibly written. it’s hard to say i enjoyed it as every time i was turning the page i was crying even harder. but, it takes some special ability to write such an emotionally destroying book.

this book will stay with me for the rest of my life

Jess Griffin

i’ve never felt so unwell after reading a book. like i’ve been sobbing to the point i genuinely feel sick.. but in the best way?

this was just so incredibly written. it’s hard to say i enjoyed it as every time i was turning the page i was crying even harder. but, it takes some special ability to write such an emotionally destroying book.

this book will stay with me for the rest of my life

Nouran

Faith Kitowski

i have never read someone so physically heart wrenching. i literally wanted to crawl into a hole and not come out. my heart is in shards, little tiny pieces. lauren and josh were soulmates and it breaks my heart to think of all the time they didn’t get together but they made the best of the time they had. they both had so much love for each other, like they literally loved each other with everything that they had and lauren had the biggest heart. 

i felt like i was going through the grieving process with josh when i was reading this. i actually felt ill and was shaking. i wanted to be able to be there for him even though he’s fictional. 

that being said, this book reminded me why i don’t read sad books very often. and i have a feeling that i won’t be reading one for a good long while. i’m gonna need some time to recovery from this

Tasha Ells

I loved this book! And did I ever cry… but I think Lauren’s chapters were boring sometimes. The “no sir” comments were in everyone’s dialogue and threw me off every time, because no way does everyone say that.

Melyssa Tromberg 

This book is an emotional story about a women dying of a terminal illness; a story about grief, loss, love, acceptance and embracing life

Lauren is a 26-year-old who is recently married to the love on her life, Joshua. She finds out she has a terminal illness & is determined to make the most of her final years. A part of that being writting letters to Josh to help him through the grieving process- one letter each month for the first year.
 
Josh is on the autism spectrum + BRAVO to Kristan Huggins for doing an impeccable job at giving insight as to what is like for individuals on the spectrum to live, day-to-day life. He stole my heart, everyone deserves a Josh in their lives. 

This story alternates between Josh's present-day attempts to live his new life & Lauren's POV in the past, making her feel real. The amount of detail around Lauren's diaease is both impressive and heartbreaking to read. 

If you loved the movie P.S. I love you, then this book is for you! This story will have your heart, I can promise you that.

If you want to cry your eyes out this is the book for you! It was a good story but was genuinely depressing for 90% of the book I had to force myself to finish because I felt sad every time I read it lol 

Gabbi Miller

Nursyuhada Zainul

Hands down to the most heartbreaking fiction I’ve ever read in my entire life. 

You will learn a lot from this book. 

Love, loss, grieving, growing, moving on.

I cannot stress enough how wonderful and how good the book is, especially the writing style. There is something about the way Kristin telling the stories from 3rd person’s POV. 

You get to learn and feel what’s happening in the past, and also feel the pain from present pov. 

100% agree to my friend’s review, which I quote, “No spice, just tears”. 

Cried at 2%, 6%, 10%, and the tears goes on and on along the reading progress. 

The last 30% were really really good. Bawled my eyes out, and my visions are all blurry from the good tragic tears. Chapter 35? Suck the life out of me. 

Pack Up The Moon is definitely in my book-to-cry-top-list 3

So beautiful and heartbreaking all at the same time 

Victoria Floyd 

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.

Krista 

So, this totally is not a book that I read on daily basis. But this time I picked it up because I wanted to cry while reading something (don’t ask me why, I don’t know). In the end, did I cry? Not really. But was it sad? 100% .

rylee m

** spoiler alert **
           way better in the beginning. she messed up really bad with the nephew of the main characters age. had autism rep but since i know very little about autism idk if it was good or not. 
the grief and love i felt was written beautifully and i was always team duffy girl and i’m glad i was right

Pack Up the Moon

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