In the Pink

In the Pink: How I Met the Perfect (Younger) Man, Survived Breast Cancer, and Found True Happiness After 40, by Susan McBride.

Ed wasn't yet home from work, and I didn't want to call and tell him something so serious over the phone. So I called my mom and burst into tears. "I'll be right over," she said, and appeared on my doorstep within minutes. When I let her in, she gave me a bear hug, crying as I cried, telling me, "If I could take the cancer from you and give it to myself, I would do it in a heartbeat."

I wished someone would take the cancer from me, too, but I didn't want to give it to her. I just wanted it gone.

Susan McBride is the author of Little Black Dress, which I reviewed here in 2011, and I also got to do an email interview with her then. Now she has released In the Pink, a novella which details her fight with breast cancer while she was writing LBD and some of her other novels as well.

McBride has a history of breast cancer in her family - her aunt had breast cancer, and later another relative is diagnosed with it too - and her doctor almost didn't catch it at first, which is scary. A year or so previously, she met Ed, who turns out to be the love of her life (she in fact has a child with him, at age 47!), and she worried that he wouldn't stay with her through this, since they weren't yet married - but he did, and they go on to get married and have a daughter.

The book itself is very short, clocking in at 87 pages including a few Q&As in the end, and then readers also get a sneak peek of The Truth about Love and Lightning, McBride's next novel which will be in stores in February 2013.

3.5 stars out of 5.

*Disclosure: I received a copy of this novel to review. The opinions expressed here, however, are my own.