Pack Up The Moon by Kristan Higgins – a Review

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Description:
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.

Review:

Pack Up The Moon by Kristan Higgins was an emotional stand alone novel.  The story follows a wonderful young newly married couple, Joshua and Lauren, who are very much in love. Lauren begins to have issues with possible asthma attacks, causing breathing problems; but soon she is diagnosed with a terminal illness.  Joshua is a genius in designing medical devices, and tries to find one that will help his wife. Lauren does everything she can to fight this illness, figuring she has years, since she was only in her late twenties; but when pneumonia sets in and the breathing worsens, she realizes that she has little time left.

When Lauren passes, Joshua is grief stricken, unable to handle the loss of his true love.  It was very emotional to see him and the rest of the family that grieved with him; Jen (Lauren’s sister), Sarah (her best friend), Lauren and Joshua’s mothers, Jen’s husband and two children, and Pebbles, the dog,  as they all bonded together to get through this tragedy.  I thought the characters that Higgins created were wonderful, and did get a kick out of Joshua’s new gay friend he meets later, Radley.

The POV’s follow both Lauren (in past) and Joshua (present time), grieving the loss of his wife. In Lauren’s POV, she goes back to when she first met and fell in love with Joshua, as well as writing notes to her deceased dad. Knowing that she will die soon, Lauren decides to write 12 letters to Joshua (one for each month) that she left to her friend Sarah to hold and give to him each month for one year, after her death. At first the letters, make Joshua grieve, but feesl she is still with him, but as they come each month, Lauren, who was wonderful, has given him different instructions to help him cope and move on.  Some of things were to get out of the house and go grocery shopping, have all his family over for dinner, buy new clothes, get rid of some furniture, and closer to the end find a new love, especially since he was still very young. I did love this concept.

Pack Up the Moon was a heartbreaking, tragic and very emotional story, that at times was depressing, but also had some funny moments later in.  I loved both Lauren and Joshua, as well as their family.  Pack Up the Moon was so very well written by Kristan Higgins.

Reviewed by Barb

Copy provided by Publisher