Kirkus ReviewsSPOILER ALERT
“In her emotional debut memoir, Yeasting tells the painful story of losing her fiance to cancer. Why would a lively, attractive woman begin dating a terminally ill man she didn’t know? According to Yeasting, Michael Chu was easy to love. After meeting on a dating website, the two fun-loving Canadians instantly clicked. Michael was open about his terminal lung cancer, and Yeasting decided to accept a future broken heart and get to know him. The couple quickly became “soul mates” and spent more than a year together, living life to the fullest. They had a lot in common, including a love for travel, and visited beautiful places together, like Hawaii and the Dominican Republic. Yeasting’s love remained steadfast as Michael’s health faded, and when an additional tumor was discovered in his brain, she was there for him throughout the successful surgery...” - Kirkus Reviews Click Kirkus Reviews heading to read the balance of this review
Click ChaptersIndigo.ca to see more reviews
☆☆☆☆☆ 5 out of 5 stars.
IrisK - June 2016 "Great book for anyone dealing with profound grief!!!I personally have found this book to be wonderful, because it has a very inspiring, authentic and comforting message to everyone with a hurting heart: It lets you know that grief is a (long) process, and it's okay to take your time to work through it. While the author isn't afraid to show how painful it can be, she also gives you tremendous strength that you will find hope and joy again. I highly recommend this book to any grieving person who needs to understand the emotional and devastating process they are going through. Every funeral home, hospice, and hospital should carry it to help those who are going home for the first time to a new life without their loved one." ☆☆☆☆☆ 5 out of 5 stars. DJMac - July 2016 "Poignant and compelling. Above all, this is a story about the courage to love. The true story of two people who meet and fall in love when one is in the final stages of a terminal disease is a compelling testament to the power of love. It is an immensely moving tale of the ups and downs of a real life given over to love, made all the more poignant knowing time is short. The book brought tears to my eyes many times yet filled me with awe and respect for the writer who refused to back down in the face of the inevitable. Grief is the price of love, yet most of us don't have the certainty of grief staring us down every day we are in a relationship. "Our time together wasn't long but we managed to squeeze in a lifetime of love, laughter, and tears". Click Amazon.ca to go to link to see more reviews
☆☆☆☆☆ 5 out of 5 stars.
By Amazon Customer on March 5 2016 Format: Kindle Edition "The author's account of her emotional, psychological and even physical ordeal dealing with the devastating condition that is cancer is both gripping and moving. As a reader I was taken into the depths of one of the author's most trying times in her life and felt compassion and love on levels difficult to express. Imbued with details and personal insights, the vulnerability that the author reveals parallels the bravery and courage that her husband also had in dealing with cancer with dignity and strength. Anyone who has ever dealt with this condition or simply wants to experience a very profound and solemn aspect of the narrative of human existence must read this book. This book is a guaranteed heart squeezer that will leave you pondering what life and love really mean and how valuable those around us are." ☆☆☆☆☆ 5 out of 5 stars. By Amazon Customer on March 10 2016 Format: Kindle Edition "Cynda allows us to join her on her emotional, spiritual, and physical journey as she recounts her experience of finding love, losing love, and re-discovering herself in the process. The frankness and honesty of her journal entries and emails between her and Michael are refreshing, endearing and bittersweet. Her story reminds us of the force that is love and how it can transforms our lives, leaving us changed forever. By following her heart and allowing herself to love unconditionally despite the circumstances, Cynda demonstrates the courage of the human spirit. By regaining herself and striving to live on without Michael she shows the tenacity and the capacity of human will. This is a beautiful story of choosing to live and love one precious moment at time." Amazon.comClick Amazon.com to see more reviews
☆☆☆☆ 4 out of 5 stars.
By Amazon Customer on February 17, 2016 This review is from: For Michael, Love Cynda (Paperback) "A touching, heart warming, remarkably frank (and sometimes heartbreaking) but also inspirational life and love story. Cynda takes you through her journey with candor and humour and you find yourself immersed in her and Michael's immediately. You truly feel her struggle, her challenge, and her love throughout. Once you put it down you will realize that love conquers even in death. Cynda also shows us that when memories are made with ones we love their memory becomes our treasure ... and for that we are rich. Thank you for a great read!" ☆☆☆☆☆ 5 out of 5 stars. By Amazon Customer on March 8, 2016 Format: Hardcover "I read this book in one sitting. It was liking finding someone's diary and knowing that I shouldn't be reading it but unable to stop myself. Cynda is one of my dearest friends. She went missing from my life after meeting Michael and this tribute to him has finally told me how the story unfolded. The book is very emotional which sometimes gets away from her but it is clear from the outset that this was a special meeting of two souls who each needed what the other had to give. There are few people in our lives like Cynda who has boundless optimism and a genuine love of life. Her ability to stay with someone and see him to the end of his life with no fear for her own survival only testifies to her capacity for caring and that I am beyond lucky to have a friend like her in my life. I very much doubt I could have done what she did for Michael but it was a two way street and what she gained from the experience is clearly told on every page. Its a jaw dropping tale of love without boundaries. A whole box of kleenex is required." ☆☆☆☆☆ 5 out of 5 stars. By Amazon Customer on April 17, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition "Being a lover of words, I have read many books that evoke feelings, empathy, compassion, and resonance, via its narrative. But a story told through retelling, by recreating words, emotions, and imageries, cannot capture the true, raw and powerful sentiments that the original dialogues, notes, and prose, that were once the actual words of the people in the story. By documenting their love story as a series of original emails, letters, notes and pictures, Cynda and Michael are allowing you an unvarnished view into their love story and letting their own literal words that they have said to each other, be the vehicle for you to decipher just how unique and unselfish this love story is. This "unedited" way of writing is unique and powerful, because it allows the reader to determine, and feel for themselves just how powerful this love story is, without being told to feel one way or another. It is almost as if Cynda knew that the original words were enough to evoke in her reader the power of their love for one another and how her grief was overcome by hope and a sense of continuity. Thank you Cynda and Michael for allowing us into your immensely personal lives and making us feel hopeful, enamored, and thankful for what is in our lives." Goodreads.comClick Goodreads.com to see more reviews
Marla rated it ☆☆☆☆☆ it was amazing
Cynda and Michael’s story is a story that needs to be told. It is not just another tender love story. Their love story is in essence a story of courage: Courage to fall in love with the foresight of heartache to come, courage to bask in love while clouds of terminal illness hover about, courage to embrace love while life is slipping away, and ultimately, courage to let go. To Michael, Love Cynda starts out as many romances nowadays do: A chance meeting on a dating website that morphs into a romantic relationship. What makes their story poignant, though, was what happened beforehand: Michael revealed that he had terminal cancer. Cynda decided that it did not matter, thereby igniting a moving story of courage. Written in the format of an epistolary novel, the book almost entirely comprises of emails and other forms of correspondence exchanged between Cynda and Michael. Sometimes a difficult read by virtue of the raw emotion and frankness evinced in their personal exchanges, Cynda gently compels the reader to continue reading by adding, intermittently, a first-person perspective. Often a tricky writing style to master, Cynda gets it right. Her intermittent appearance as a narrator does not lapse into self-centeredness. Instead she succeeds – perhaps unintentionally so - to clarify and supplement key events that either preceded or coincided with their written exchanges. Photos included in the book serve to provide the reader with a snapshot of Cynda and Michael’s short life together: Photos illustrating shared adventures, photos transforming mundane, every-day moments into special keepsakes, and photos introducing the reader to special friends and pets. It is as if Cynda almost seeks to convince the reader that their relationship had moments of normalcy too. And yet, it is in these portrayals of normalcy that the immanency of tragedy is somehow underscored. Privy to knowing that for this couple there will not be a ‘happy ever after’, the reader is induced to partake in ‘make belief’, if only for a while. It is easy to sympathize with Michael. After all, the reader knows that for Michael the die has been cast. As the story, however, unfolds, sympathy for Michael turns into heartfelt empathy for Cynda: Cynda who will have to grief for Michael and mourn the demise of her ‘happy ever after’. For Michael, Love Cynda evokes in its reader a rhetorical question that is uncomfortable to think about, yet impossible to ignore. It speaks to the idiosyncratic meaning of courage. It demands that its reader considers the well-known adage, ‘rather love and lose, than never love at all’, and contemplates whether the latter part could be somewhat palatable under these circumstances. The playwright, Arthur Miller, is said to have remarked that, in the end, all we could really hope for is having the right regrets. Cynda and Michael’s story bears testimony of the wisdom of these words. |
|