A Heart That Works

A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney, 180 pages

 A grieving love letter to Love, about losing his young son. Funny, angry, sad and dark... and really, funny--the kind of funny that makes you laugh through tears.

 

Wink

 

Wink by Rob Harrell 316 pp.

Ross Maloy is a seventh grader who just wants to be a normal kid. However, after being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that may cause him to lose an eye, his life is anything but normal. Rob Harrell, a survivor of the same type of cancer, created a character who faces the difficulties of being both a middle schooler and a cancer patient with honesty, a little tragedy, and a lot of humor. The humor in the story is not making light of the idea of a potentially fatal disease. Rather it laughs at the oddball situations Ross finds himself in while facing his classmates and manages his treatment. The survivor in me found this story to be well written and factual without being grotesque or maudlin. 

The Deal of a Lifetime

The Deal of a Lifetime by Fredrik Backman (2016) 65 pages

I read this short novelette three times, especially savoring it the second and third times. Backman knows how to pack so much into so few words and I didn't want to miss any of them. A wealthy middle-aged divorced man with a grown son has cancer, and he looks back at his life while considering the lives of his adult son and of a cancer patient who is a young girl. Drawings here and there make this work even more charming.