On the eve of what was supposed to be a triumphant ‘cancerversary’ with her husband Jack to celebrate three years of good health, Daisy suffers a devastating blow: her doctor tells her that the cancer is back, but this time it’s unstoppable.
Death is a frightening prospect – but not because she’s afraid for herself. She’s terrified of what will happen to her brilliant but charmingly helpless husband when she’s no longer there to take care of him. It’s this fear that keeps her up at night, until she stumbles on the solution: she has to find him another wife.
With a singular determination, Daisy searches for Jack’s perfect match. But as the thought of her husband with another woman becomes all too real, Daisy is forced to decide what’s more important in the short amount of time she has left: her husband’s happiness – or her own?
I came across this book randomly in 2015. I was at the airport in London waiting for my flight to come back home and I didn’t have anything to read on the plane. To be honest, I didn’t think I’d like this book very much, but I needed something to read and that was the best I could find.
Nonetheless, Daisy caught my heart. Her second battle with cancer is slowly tearing her – and Jack – apart. I was so upset every time she would push Jack or her mom away. It was like she didn’t realize that they were going to lose her, and they wanted to be by her side and spend as much time with her as possible. The search for a new wife Jack was pointless. She should have been more worried about spending more time with the people who love her and not looking for the perfect wife for her husband.
Towards the end she starts to regret her choices and gets jealous of Jack and the woman she was trying to set him up with. What’s the point of setting your husband with someone if you’re going to get jealous when they start developing a bond?
Overall, I really like the story. It shows what a person dying from cancer and the people around them go through, especially the denial phase that Daisy and Jack seemed to be in for a long time in the book. It is very well written and captures your attention easily, but it’s a bit heavy. It all circles back to Daisy eventual death.
My advice: don’t read the final chapters of this book while The Fault in Our Stars plays in the tv in the background. Makes it a million times heavier to read. That was my mistake.
