Will I love We All Want Impossible Things?

I've told so many friends that this is the only book I've ever read during which I was crying so hard I could barely breathe and laughing at the same time. I loved, loved, loved the relationships among the characters. They felt clever and real and sassy in all the perfect proportions. My own book addresses dying, courage, the afterlife, so a book that bravely faces the pain and love and beauty of death, life, and love all while being uplifting was something I couldn't put down.

I fell in love with Ash and her best friend Edi before I was halfway down the first page. I can see why other readers have compared this book to Nora Ephron’s novels. It’s funny, heart-filled, sexy, and sweet, but never twee. I could totally relate to Ash, who grieves unconventionally and tries to be the best friend, mother, and human in the world while secretly rebelling and acting up.

Most of all, I adored how this book focuses on family and how we build our families through love. It’s a book I haven’t stopped talking about since I read… show more.

The book is set during Ash's best friend Edi's hospice stay. Far from being maudlin or cliched, the book is hilarious as well as tragic.

Ash is so incredibly real and flawed, as is the cast of rotating visitors and hospital staffers. Reading it makes you feel okay about your own questionable life decisions, if you've been reflecting on your choices, as I was when I read it, LOL! I didn't want this book to end as much as I didn't want Edi's life to end.

This is the most devastatingly beautiful book.

It is deeply, deeply sad and yet also uplifting and life-affirming, perhaps surprisingly so for a novel that is largely about the end of a life. Edi and Ash have been best friends since childhood. For 40 years they have been through every milestone together and share many memories. Now their friendship is in its final days.

Edi is suffering from incurable ovarian cancer and doesn’t very have long left. And Ash’s world is reshaping itself around the hospice where she is slowly dying. It all sounds too sad to bear but even… show more.