Julie Lawson Timmer

Five Days Left was a great insight into Huntington's disease, a disease I knew little of. It is a gut-wrenching story of Mara, a wife and mother who has given herself five days left to live, due to the onset of this horrific disease.
And it's also the story of Scott, a soon-to-be father who grows to love the young foster boy who has been living with them for a year. A boy who will be going back to live with his mom -in five days.
These two people meet through an online group, and the story makes you care about what happens to both of them, along with their family and those who love them.
There is no happy ending to Huntington's disease, so grab a hanky, you'll need one!… (més)

I didn't really like this book very much. The main character is Markie (a jarring name), a newly divorced woman who flees her marriage to a flaky man whose flaws she did not recognize until he'd ruined her life and publicly humiliated her, and moves to an anonymous town with her teenage son, away from the dominating clutches of her unsympathetic parents. All she wants is to hide from the world and wallow in her bitterness, trying to maintain a relationship with her son, and going about it all the wrong ways. She unwittingly moves in next door to Mrs Saint, an apparently and mysteriously wealthy old woman who keeps a household of lost souls and seems determined to make Markie one of her collection. Markie resentfully resists, though gradually she is worn down, and by the time the story unravels into tragedy she comes to an epiphany of self awareness. On the surface this is a perfectly good, relatable story. I'm not sure what is is that bugged me about it-- I know I did not like the protagonist, who is blind and selfish through most of the story. The big reveal felt contrived and gratuitous, making true horror seem almost like an afterthought, like the author wanted to find the best explanation for a whole bunch of secrecy, and just used the biggest thing she could think of, even though there was no real clue about what was really going on. Maybe the writer just isn't that skilled, and the climactic events just needed to be built up better for true emotional impact. I was happy to get through this one.… (més)