You Take It From Here - Softcover

Ribon, Pamela

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1451646232 ISBN 13: 9781451646238

Publisher: Gallery Books, 2012

Synopsis

From the author of Why Girls Are Weird comes a poignant, funny tale about two very different best friends—one terminally ill with cancer, and the other determined to do absolutely everything she can to help...

Just because you’d give your best friend everything doesn’t mean she has to take it.

On the heels of a divorce, all Danielle Meyers wants is her annual vacation with sassy, life-long best friend, Smidge—complete with umbrella cocktails by an infinity pool—but instead she’s hit with the curveball of a lifetime. Smidge takes Danielle to the middle of nowhere to reveal a diagnosis of terminal cancer, followed by an unusual request: “After I’m gone, I want you to finish the job. Marry my husband. Raise my daughter. I’m gonna teach you to how to be Smidge 2.0.”

As Danielle wrestles with this major life decision, she finds herself torn between being true to her best friend’s wishes and being honest with herself. Parenting issues aside, Smidge’s small-town Louisiana world is exactly the one Danielle made sure to escape. Danielle isn’t one for playing the social butterfly, or being the center of attention. And when your best friend tries to set you up on a date night with her husband, it might be time to become the bossy one for a change.

In the spirit of Beaches and Steel Magnolias, You Take It from Here is an honest, hilarious, and heartbreaking novel that ultimately asks: How much should we sacrifice for the ones we love the most?

About this title

From the Author:

[Excerpt from a piece written for John Scalzi's THE BIG IDEA]

You Take It From Here deals with a lot of bossiness.  Stubborn people, one-track-minded illnesses, the conviction that comes with knowing someone loves you wholeheartedly, and what can happen when you're faced with the terrifying enormity of the unknown. It's about the lengths we will go to for the people we care about the most, and how much we can handle in order to hang on for the ones who need us. We act like nobody knows how he or she going to die, but that's not exactly true. Some people know. They know with utter certainty. Sometimes they even have a pretty good idea of when. When those people need you, it's hard to say anything other than, "Tell me what to do."

This is the part where I need to tell you that this novel is mostly a comedy. It's about friendship and history and small towns and love affairs and yes, cancer, but it's really about that bond you have with your very best, lifelong friend, and how it can survive pretty much anything.

Perhaps because there's no legal way to sever it. You can't divorce your best friend. You can't get emancipated from her. A restraining order only sends her to the boundaries of what will still be an audible yelling zone. You are stuck with each other, even if you spend years ignoring it, even if you pretend each other dead. You will still talk to each other inside your heads. You can hate each other like siblings in the back of a car on week three of a month-long family vacation, but you will still need each other like lovers reuniting at an airport. Nothing can split that bond. Not even death. Because you know that girl will find a way to haunt you. So you'd better be nice to her while she's still around.

From the Inside Flap:

"I can't wait to pass this book along to every woman who ever mattered to me." -- Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Gods in Alabama and A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty

About this edition

• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1451646232
• ISBN 13: 9781451646238
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336