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We All Want Impossible Things: this slim book with the most perfect cover has both drawn me to it, and honestly, scared me a little since its release. Now available in paperback, and just after the one year mark of Dad passing away, the feelings drawing me in won, and they were the ones I should have listened to all along.

Ash and Edi are lifelong best friends, and Edi has terminal ovarian cancer. The story begins with Edi and her family, including Ash, deciding her next steps in care when there are no more treatment options, and hospice is the recommended next step. What commences feels like a few short weeks of Ash navigating caring for her dearest friend in the most meaningful of ways while also mourning the eventual loss of her, bit by bit.

I’ll admit I was scared of the sadness in this book. Having been the main caretaker for Dad, I was worried it would be too hard at times, but then I hadn’t met the narrator, Ash, and Catherine Newman’s sense of humor. I was in careful hands, the story was tenderly, yet wittily, narrated by Ash, and while I cried a couple times near the end of the story, I was brought right back in by the hope and goodness of everyone who surrounded Edi in her last days.

I learned before I read that Catherine Newman experienced a similar loss. While this is fiction, the grain of truth, the authenticity, never wanes, and it feels like a deeply personal memoir. We should all have a friend like Edi. We should all have one like Ash. We should all continue to want Impossible Things. I loved this book. All the stars. I only wish I’d read it sooner.

I received a gifted copy.

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