Very occasionally a book comes along that makes you stop and truly put life on hold whilst you escape into a world that isn't your own for a while and when that book ends it leaves you feeling both empty and more fulfilled than you could imagine. The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes is one of those very very special books that will stay with me for a very long time to come.
It is a story of forty year old Mia ‘Rabbit' Hayes as she enters a hospice preparing to die from the cancer she's been trying to fight for the last few years. This book is not really Rabbit's story at heart, instead it's about her mother Molly, her father Jack, her siblings Grace and Davey and Juliet, Rabbit's 12 year old daughter. That is what makes this story so beautiful, it's the story of a family trying to cope with something that they aren't ready to face. It's about the hope they exhibit and how they manage as it begins to fade, it's about how no matter what our beliefs are family is what binds us together.
Chapters are told from different family members throughout this book, often flashing back to their teenage years and focusing on Rabbit's love affair with her brothers bandmate Johnny we are welcomed into this warm, lively and strong Irish family. McPartlin has written a book where the relationships explored in this book are each intertwined not by lots of action or significant events but by the simple every day actions of being a family.
I cried buckets at this book, but just when I'd have tears falling in the next moment the wonderful characters would do something that would make me laugh and then I'd be right back in the emotion crying again. I couldn't put it down, I just wanted to experience the journey this family were going on and whilst it was dreadfully sad it was also incredibly uplifting.
Books of this calibre are rare, this was so incredibly special and moving. It's as good if not better than Jojo Moyes' Me Before You. It will be a book that I'll recommend time and time again because I believe Rabbit Hayes has something to teach us all which is sometimes just being ordinary is what makes us extraordinary.
