All the Days Before Tomorrow

by Rebecca Brodkey

a friends-to-lovers romance about cancer, healing, and love worth scouring the world for.

despite what you may have heard…

Ruby Hirsch is not a tragedy.

Sure, she lost touch with almost all her friends during the slog of breast cancer treatment. And okay, her writing career also screeched to a halt. But she’s trying!

Ruby’s (former) BFF Penelope has everything Ruby lacks: a bestselling book, a doting fiancé, and a solid friend group. But Pen needs something that Ruby has in spades: time. Pen asks Ruby to help plan her upcoming wedding, and in exchange, offers to introduce Ruby to her literary agent, the jumpstart Ruby needs for her writing career.

Ruby must rely on the sunshine best man, Eitan, who seems to have everything figured out—except wedding planning. The more time they spend together, the more Ruby sees beneath his sunny bravado, and learns about a grief that mirrors her own. Eitan, meanwhile, sees the reality of her and Penelope’s friendship and begins asking questions that threaten the entire wedding—and the writing career that Ruby has hanging in the balance.

As the wedding, her feelings for Eitan, and her own dreams for a life post-cancer collide, Ruby must reckon with what she’s actually fighting for, and what it means to survive.

Genres: Romance

343 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 2, 2026

About the author

Rebecca Brodkey lives in the Chicago suburbs and spends most of her time hunched over a notebook, reading, and eating popcorn. She is a breast cancer survivor, a lifelong mythology nerd, and a dreamer. She is the author of a contemporary romance novel called All the Days Before Tomorrow, and a fantasy novel called Darker Than the Starless Night.

Reviews

[Cara · Rating 5 out of 5]

REVIEW TO COME, MY HEART HURTS💔💔!!!!!!!

💐🌷🌹🌸🌺A friends to lovers romance about cancer, healing, and love worth scouring the world for💐🌷🌹🌸🌺!!!!!!!!

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

it was over once he started ecstatically singing dancing through life but the hand flex at the river and him burning her a CD (in 2026) had me folding

if he wanted to he would was a saying inspired by eitan btw

“these are boobs of life” quote of the century

Bookstagram | Blog

[Anna (annasbookstacks) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah so I had a feeling I’d love this book and I was sooo right. 5, 6, infinity stars for Ruby and her story. My life has been impacted by cancer in more ways than one, so I was really anxious going into this story, afraid it would be too triggering to read. While it was tough at times, I found this story to be so healing and comforting for myself. This book reminded me a lot of one of my favorite books, Passion Project, with the healing/grief rep and learning to live and love life again after going through something traumatic.

Truly from the very first chapter I was hooked, engaged with the writing style and Ruby’s journey to getting back out there and learning to love life again after breast cancer. My heart hurt for Ruby so many times during this story but I admired her so much for continuing to try and not giving up. Her character growth by the end was beautiful.

The premise of the story was super fun and had me entertained the whole way through. I love books with weddings in them so I really enjoyed how that tied into the story. I really loved the strangers to friends to lovers and how it was done. Eitan was truly the sweetest mmc that saw Ruby for who she was and loved her regardless. He was so supportive and understanding I could cry. I could go on and on about him and his softness towards my girl!! Their relationship was so easy to root for and I loved how it developed. I also really loved Louise and the role she played in Ruby’s healing journey. I literally cried at one point bc of her. There were so many parts to this story that made it so special and a book that I’ll be thinking about for a long time. I truly enjoyed everything about it: the plot, the writing, the pacing, the characters, the mental health rep, the cancer awareness, and obviously the romance. Truly such an easy addition to my favorites list!!

[ella (luniellar) · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was an honor to read this book. I never felt so grateful for words an author put together about such a powerful topic like breast cancer. I can feel the care that she put into each scene and story development. I truly have no notes. I was sobbing through the hottest part of this book if that says anything about how emotional this ride was.

If you enjoyed 'Promise Me Sunshine' by Cara Bastone or 'Passion Project' by London Sperry, you will absolutely adore this one!

Also this is more for me honestly, but I would love to read more contemporary romances in future from Rebecca because what can she not do!!!

Thank you to author for an advanced copy of this book that I have tabbed and cried into. I can't wait to reread it already.

[Rabecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an ARC copy from Rebecca Brodkey of All the Days Before Tomorrow in exchange for my 100% honest review.

Out of the 49 books I’ve read this year, only three have been five stars and this is now one of them.

This is a beautiful slow burn romance between a girl who beat breast cancer and a guy who’s lost his father due to cancer. But it’s so much more than that.

I fell in love with characters like Louse whose wisdom and outlook on life was inspirational. I felt such hatred towards other characters and seeing where they ended up was a treat to see.

Brodkey both broke and healed my heart with this one. To write something so vulnerable mirroring your own experience in life and being willing to share that with the world is a feat I admire so much.

This book, the quotes, the story, the cover, everything about this book is beautiful, and I’m so glad to be able to say I’m one of the first people to read it!💜

[clicktojointhemafia]

a cancer survivor finding her love for life again :') im going to go cry now

[samantha ✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I literally read this in two sittings which is genuinely unheard of. Rebecca has done a really beautiful job shining a light on what it's like to have gone through any sort of cancer and the actuality of what it's like specifically as a young person who goes through this.

Despite my own journey being different than Ruby (and the author's) I cannot tell you how seen I felt in SO many different parts of this book. Having cancer as a young person is hard (cue the "you're too young for this") and coping with the fact that this is something you'll have to worry about for the rest of your life is even harder. Rebecca's portrayal of this was (obviously) so genuine and authentic. Whether it was the jokes about the fake silicone tits (I laughed because it's true) or one of the numerous anxieties spiral it was all just, so real.

And to touch on the romance - I absolutely adored!!!! Eitan and Ruby. They were both beautifully flawed and messy (understandably so) and I genuinely would read so many more books about them.


"The only point I'm trying to make is that the end isn't the thing that you should be scared of. Life has too much joy and awe in store for you."

[mel. · Rating 5 out of 5]

a cancer rom com love story? i was sat immediately when rebecca made the announcement, and it did not disappoint. in my opinion, we need more love stories like this that make us feel all the warm fuzzies on the inside and also face the hard truths of real life.

all the days before tomorrow is about a young cancer survivor, ruby, trying to navigate life and re-learning who she is after treatment. it was real, raw, honest, sad, and funny as hell. ruby is a character you can’t help but love and root for. eitan knows that all too well 👀 he is an absolute dream (he sings musical songs!!) with demons of his own, and is portrayed so well with how mental health can impact everyone differently.

i went into this expecting an emotional story with lots of tension and heartwarming moments. and that’s absolutely what i got 💞 what i wasn’t expecting was how much i hated pen (i hope she go to therapy!!) and how impactful parts of the story about suffering and going through hardships were for me. health has been a big concern in my personal life and the quote i shared hit me so fxcking hard. it just perfectly summed up everything i was feeling and experiencing that i just couldn’t put into words myself, and i sobbed. 🥹

thank you so much, @rebecca, for an advanced copy of your new book. releasing June 2, and i cannot wait for the world to meet ruby and eitan 💞

go check your boobs!

[Minna · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I think I'm a little obsessed with you," he whispers.

"Sounds unhealthy," I say breathily. "Might want to talk to someone about that."

"Smartass," he mutters, pulling my face towards his.

"I'm a little obsessed with you too," I say against his lips. Maybe a little more than obsessed, I confess, just to myself.

HAPPY ALMOST RELEASE DAY TO ALL THE DAYS BEFORE TOMORROW! <3

mini synopsis:
Ruby Hirsch is trying to be the person she was before she had cancer, but is struggling a little (Ruby would deny this and yell "I'm TRYING my best!", which she is). She reconnects with her former BFF, Penelope, who offers her a deal to be her maid of honor and plan her wedding and in exchange she will introduce Ruby to her literary agent. Which is how Ruby suddenly has to work with the best man, Eitan, who wants nothing more than to make sure this wedding goes well for his best friend, and the more time Ruby spends with him the more she realizes he is not who she judged him to be.

review:

What a dang ride this book was! First, thank you so much to the author for letting me read her book early. I took this book with me on my family wedding trip, and it fit the vibes perfectly. Honestly, if I wasn't so busy I definitely think I would've finished this book within 48 hours, because the writing is so bingeable. I truly did not want to put this book down. I just wanted to read about Ruby and Eitan. And the amount of times I was screaming "JUST KISS ALREADY!" or "TELL HIM YOU LIKE HIM", I quite literally wanted to jump into this book and knock these two heads together, but I loved being a part of their journey.

Ruby initially comes off a bit cynical and judgmental at times, especially towards Eitan, but it is impossible not to be empathetic towards her when really she hasn't been shown much reason to have hope in good things up to this moment in her life. She really is just trying her best, and Eitan really just wants her to be happy and to know her worth as a person, because she really does deserve all the best things. And being able to watch her grow throughout this book and finally stand up for herself was so, so rewarding.

"You think I don't see you, but I do. You think the world can't lose faith in you if you lose faith in the world first"

And while this is a romance, I just want to say that my favorite side character and friendship Ruby had was with Louise. I loved her so much, and she was everything I think Ruby needed. She said things that Ruby needed to hear even when Ruby wasn't ready to accept it, and I am just so glad that Louise was a part of this story.

If you want to read about a girl who is trying to understand what survivorship looks like for her, who is trying to find hope again in herself and others, with flirty banter and a slowww burn, and you may shed some tears along the way, this is the story for you 🥰

things to expect:
💌 best man x maid of honor
💌 one TENT!!
💌 bi mmc
💌 black cat fmc x golden retriever mmc
💌 breast cancer survivor
💌 slow burn romance
💌 forced proximity

Thank you so much again to the author for this arc of her lovely book!

[Em · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you so much to the author for a physical ARC of this book! A true honor to receive a physical indie arc because I know how much h work that is on the author themselves!

Before I begin writing this review I want to state that, while yes this book heavily involves cancer, illness, depression, etc. that EVERYONE deserves a happily ever after. It’s not because they are sick, or in spite of, or pity, or idk. I think it’s so important that if I mess up how I try to say this review, I don’t intend to be ableist and that if you took the illness out of this book this was a FANTASTIC romance.

Okay now into the review!

This book was beautiful, amazing, and a total cry fest by the end. Honestly, I was surprised given it was so heavily rooted in cancer I didn’t totally lose it until the end. This book follows Ruby and Eitan in a chaotic few months of weddings within a friend group. Ruby is trying to put herself back out there after not only feeling like she lost herself in breast cancer treatment at 29, but losing all her friends (including her bf who left her the second she “finished” chemo, she didn’t stay friends with. Eitans father died from cancer four years ago and represents that losing someone and carrying the weight of that for so long doesn’t just go away. When he meets ruby at a wedding and then gets thrust into her life, he wants to help her with her goals of putting herself back out there. Ruby suddenly has her friends again when one of her friends tells her she’ll introduce her to her literary agent if she helps take over planner her wedding. Chaos ensues!

This book had so many layers, from ruby being manipulated by her “friends”, to seeing how illness and cancer continue to impact you everyday. I loved the conversations around survivorship. I especially loved the relationship that Ruby formed with Louise. I thought it was so important and really helped contrast some of Rubys relationships. I also loved how Ruby was so real, from angry to sad, to cynical. I loved her dark humor and I also loved Eitan seeing past it.

I loved Ruby and Eitans everyday moments of falling in love.

Finally, I really loved the ending. The perfect way to represent an “end” to a topic so heavily in the unknowns.

[Kamryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

First and foremost thank you so much Rebecca for giving me the opportunity to read your beautiful book early!!!

This story was BEAUTIFUL I mean truly extraordinary! There was so much depth to our FMC Ruby, she is such a beautiful person inside and out. I truly felt so connected to her the entire time. Cheering her on, and rooting for her. Watching her grow as a person was just so amazing to watch. As she walked through life after cancer treatments, friendships, and finding herself all over again.

I just adored every side character! They were so so unique impact with so much personality. It truly made the story 10x better!

Now our MMC Eitan. I loved him, husband material, compassionate, kind, caring, and just an amazing man. Ruby and him complimented each other so well.

This was truly such a powerful and inspiring love story.

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Come for the Wedding Planning, Stay for the Existential Meltdown, the Hot Dog, and the Seaglass-Eyed Boy
“All the Days Before Tomorrow” begins with post-cancer social panic and bridal labor but deepens into a surprisingly shrewd novel about survivorship, appetite, and the risk of choosing life anyway.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | April 5th, 2026


At the threshold between city shadow and lake light, Ruby stands where survival stops being a status and becomes a choice.

Some novels about illness still believe, a little too politely, that catastrophe will sand a person into wisdom. Rebecca Brodkey’s “All the Days Before Tomorrow” knows better. Cancer, in this novel, does not ennoble Ruby Hirsch so much as leave her stranded in the abrasive, unphotogenic afterlife of survival: medically managed, hormonally wrecked, sexually unsure, professionally stalled, socially displaced, and surrounded by people who were much more comfortable with her during treatment than they are with her once she is alive enough to need things again. The book’s great and prickly intelligence lies there. It understands that the crisis is not only getting sick. It is surviving without becoming easier for other people to consume.

That is why Ruby is such a strong narrator. She is not a saint, not a lesson, not a courage mascot in cute compression socks. She is frightened, horny, bitter, self-mocking, often funny in the precise way funny people become when panic has colonized the whole house and wit is the only room left to sit in. Brodkey gives her a mind that does not proceed by revelation so much as by ricochet. Ruby bargains, deflects, lusts, resents, panics, over-interprets, and occasionally says something so nakedly true she seems to surprise herself. The voice has real snap. It can turn a hot flash, a bad date, a post-treatment hormonal shot, or a florist appointment into an occasion for comic dread. At its best, it gives the novel both velocity and sting.


The leap into Lake Michigan turns terror into motion, the cold water becoming both dare and permission.

Ruby has, on paper, done what she was supposed to do. Treatment is over. She is in remission. She has, technically, survived. But Brodkey is superb on the insult concealed in that adverb. Survival is supposed to sound like arrival. Here it feels more like being dropped off somewhere without clear signage, proper lighting, or much sympathy. Ruby’s body has changed. Her confidence has thinned. Her relationship with sex is warped by reconstruction, numbness, menopause symptoms, and the memory of being left by Grant, the boyfriend who stayed long enough to count as decent and then departed early enough to leave a permanent bruise. Her writing career has stalled. Her friendships have hollowed out. One of the book’s smartest running devices is Ruby’s “Be Yourself (Again) List,” a numbered attempt to strong-arm her life back into shape. The list is funny because desperation becomes faintly ridiculous the moment it acquires bullet points.

Then Penelope comes back into her orbit, and the novel’s social machinery starts humming. Penelope is an old friend from Ruby’s writers-group past, now a poet-influencer bride with a booming platform, a coming wedding, a literary agent, and a preternatural talent for making extraction sound like intimacy. She invites Ruby into the wedding party and, more consequentially, into a deal: help me shepherd this monstrous wedding into existence, and I will help get your book in front of my agent. Ruby, who wants back into life with the hunger of someone who has spent too long watching it from behind glass, agrees.

This arrangement is the novel’s masterstroke, because it lets Brodkey yoke illness, friendship, class aspiration, female social performance, and literary ambition into one exquisitely stressful machine. The wedding is not mere backdrop. It is a delivery system. Florals, playlists, vendor meetings, dress fittings, camp itineraries, last-minute errands, conversion details, vows, escort cards, emotional triage – each task becomes another way of asking what exactly friendship means once labor enters the room wearing perfume and calling itself love. Penelope does not read as a cartoon villain for most of the novel. She is much worse than that: plausible. She is socially gifted in the most dangerous way. She knows how to make entitlement sound like vulnerability, how to convert other people’s effort into evidence of her own belovedness, how to let someone believe they are being chosen when in fact they are merely being used well.

Brodkey is especially sharp on the hierarchy of acceptable suffering. Penelope likes having Ruby near when Ruby can function as loyal witness, errand-runner, emotionally intelligent fixer, Jewish wedding consultant, and eventually marketable cancer survivor. What Penelope does not especially like is Ruby as a full person – messy, needful, desirous, intermittently angry, and no longer content to remain decorative. The novel’s most acid insight is that people often prefer illness when it is visible, noble, and finite. Survivorship is harder to romanticize. It keeps asking for time, sex, patience, practical help, and moral flexibility. It ruins the symmetry of other people’s stories about you.

The publishing subplot deepens that point rather than merely echoing it. Ruby spends much of the book believing that Penelope’s career represents a path she, too, might follow if she works hard enough, says yes often enough, and keeps proving herself useful. When she finally meets Penelope’s agent, Alice Sutherland, the fantasy curdles. Alice is less interested in the book Ruby has actually written than in the version that can be repositioned around breast cancer. It is one of the novel’s best turns, not because it exposes publishing as corrupt – that would be too easy – but because it reveals how thoroughly Ruby’s pain has been translated into opportunity by everyone around her. The wedding wants her labor. The industry wants her wound. In both cases, what matters is whether the suffering can be arranged attractively.


At the microphone, Ruby’s private dread becomes public language, and being heard starts to resemble being alive.

And then there is Louise, the character who blows the whole book open. If Penelope represents the sleek vulgarity of image culture and transactional intimacy, Aunt Louise represents appetite in its least apologetic form. She is wealthy, caustic, funny, vain, exasperating, affectionate, and living with metastatic recurrence. Brodkey does something braver with her than simple wisdom-distribution. Louise is not in the novel to provide tasteful perspective from the edge of death. She wants hot dogs. She wants the casino. She wants to complain, to joke, to meddle, to flirt with the world a bit longer. When she and Ruby go out for Chicago-style hot dogs after an oncology appointment, the book suddenly acquires a second pulse. It becomes not only a romance or a survival narrative but a novel about illness stripped of uplift. Louise will talk about recurrence, pain medicine, shrinking horizons, and the indignities of treatment without once pretending that suffering improves character. She refuses the role of moral décor.

That refusal matters because Brodkey’s prose, while mostly accessible and contemporary, is strongest when it leans into the body rather than the slogan. She is very good at altered sensation: the strange map of reconstructed breasts, the hormonal volatility, the hot flash arriving in the wrong place, the body as both self and traitor. She is very good, too, at weather. Lake water, storms, humidity, early autumn chill, aurora-lit sky – the atmospheric writing is sometimes a touch over-insistent, but usually it performs real emotional labor. Ruby experiences feeling as climate: sudden, physical, destabilizing, impossible to negotiate with. The imagery can recur a beat too often, and there are places where Brodkey explains what a scene has already made clear, but the prose has real tensile feeling. It wants to move. Even the jokes come attached to nerves.

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Under the aurora, Ruby and Louise occupy a brief human clearing between awe, mortality, and the stubborn fact of wonder.

Formally, the novel is more disciplined than it first appears. Brodkey straps nearly everything to the countdown toward Penelope’s wedding, and that choice gives the book a tautness that saves it from becoming merely episodic. Florist consultation, beach day, open mic, camp trip, rehearsal dinner, wedding collapse, biopsy dread – each episode does its own work while also tightening the screw. The calendar structure is not especially flashy, but it is effective. It makes every emotional hesitation costlier. It turns delay into plot. It also lets Brodkey stage a nice tension between ritual order and bodily disorder: weddings demand timelines, bookings, matching looks, formal entrances, perfected surfaces; cancer has other ideas.

The romance with Eitan Moreno arrives right where it should: at the point where Ruby most wants back into life and least trusts herself to re-enter it. Eitan is charismatic in a way many readers will either surrender to quickly or resist on principle. He is very handsome, emotionally intuitive in bursts, grief-marked, funny, maddening, tender, occasionally avoidant, and given to gestures that would be insufferable in a lesser book. Here, mostly, they work. He works because Brodkey refuses to make him a cure. He does not heal Ruby’s fear. He does not erase the medical plot. He does not even always know what to do with his own feelings. What he does offer is legibility. He reads her correctly. He notices that the jokes are cover, that the competence is overcompensation, that the so-called improvement project is often just fear wearing sneakers. Ruby, in turn, understands that his buoyancy is partly generosity and partly a defense against grief. Their connection has charge because it is built not only on attraction – though the book is pleasingly frank about attraction – but on the unnerving relief of being recognized without being simplified.

Some readers will find the romance almost too winning. I suspect those readers will be the same ones who distrust charm in fiction on moral grounds. I am not among them. Brodkey knows exactly what she is doing with the bathroom-door meet-cute, the beach scenes, the dance-floor electricity, the camp-tent intimacy, the hand-on-the-cheek near miss, the eventual sexual reawakening. Yet what rescues these scenes from generic uplift is the fact that they are not about Ruby becoming desirable again so much as about Ruby becoming inhabitable to herself. Eitan returns her, however briefly and contingently, to the possibility of feeling like a body instead of a diagnosis, a case file, a management project, a lesson in resilience.

The novel’s central achievement, then, is not that it tells a moving story about cancer and love. Plenty of books can do that. Its achievement is that it understands the humiliations of partial recovery – the way desire, ambition, fear, grief, and social hunger can all coexist inside one person without arranging themselves into a better moral order. Ruby does not come out of illness with serene wisdom or a tidier soul. She remains petty, funny, terrified, ambitious, jealous, desirous, self-aware in flashes and delusional in others. The book does not punish her for that. Better still, it does not ask her to become inspirational before granting her feeling.

Its central limitation is that by the end Penelope begins carrying slightly too much symbolic freight. For most of the book she is painfully recognizable: vain, charming, insecure, acquisitive, intermittently warm, socially lethal. In the final act, especially around the rehearsal dinner and wedding implosion, she becomes just a shade too perfect as a vessel for everything the novel wants to indict – influencer narcissism, prestige hunger, exploitative friendship, self-mythologizing literary culture. The confrontation is dramatically satisfying, but it is also one of the few places where the book’s appetite for payoff slightly outruns its patience for complexity. A few speeches elsewhere also arrive a touch over-shaped, as though the novel momentarily wants us to underline them.

Even so, I would rather take that excess than a more tasteful, flatter book that never risked ugliness. “All the Days Before Tomorrow” earns its mess. It is willing to be hormonal, funny, lusty, cruel, sentimental for a second and then embarrassed by its own sentimentality. It lets a hot dog matter. It lets an open mic matter. It lets a ruined wedding matter less than one dead woman’s final days. It lets a romantic reconciliation stand not as proof that life is fair but as proof that unfair life can still contain gifts. That is a much tougher claim.


In the cheap fluorescence of The Sunny Island, shabby sanctuary becomes fate’s preferred architecture.

I’d place the book at 88/100, or 4 stars. That score suits its temperature: genuinely moving, structurally shrewd, often very funny, occasionally over-emphatic, and more ambitious than its packaging first suggests. It is strongest where it refuses to confuse illness with enlightenment. It is weaker where it presses too hard for moral clarity. But it keeps insisting on something harder, stranger, and finally more convincing than triumph. Not that suffering makes life meaningful. Not that love cures fear. Not that surviving entitles anyone to coherence. Only that life, even half-healed and badly timed and medically shadowed, remains worth wanting in its vulgar particulars.

That is what the ending sharpens. By the time Brodkey arrives at biopsies, burial, cancelled weddings, agent disillusionment, broken friendships, and hard-won love, the question is no longer whether Ruby will become her old self again. It is whether she can stop treating life as something that begins after fear ends. The novel’s answer is no, and thank God for that. Fear stays. The body stays precarious. The future refuses to clarify itself. But the book denies fear the final aesthetic word. It leaves Ruby not purified but awake – hot dog in hand, weather shifting overhead, phone about to ring, life still messy enough to choose.


Before the lake light and threshold resolve, the painting begins as a search for where solitude, city, and survival can share a single frame.


The pencil map keeps the emotional architecture spare: a figure, a threshold, a band of water, and more unanswered air than certainty.


The first washes let feeling arrive before detail, staining the page with lake-blue hesitation and dusk-pink resolve.


The palette narrows the book’s weather into workable color – bruise, bloom, shoreline, interior light, and the small warmth that survives them.

All watercolor illustrations by Demetris Papadimitropoulos.

[❋Rushna❋ · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75/5

I’ve enjoyed this author’s debut fantasy and have been so excited to get my hands on her first romance. I adored this book and its overall messaging. While it’s not my first time reading book that discusses cancer, it was certainly my first time reading one from the perspective of a cancer “survivor” and seeing how they face life after that. I feel like this aspect of cancer is not often explored in books.

This story was truly emotional and sweet at the same time because the characters felt so real. I was hooked from the start. Ruby and Eitan’s progression of their relationship felt so natural and I loved how Eitan was such a sweetheart to her. I was so proud to see Ruby’s character growth throughout the book and was constantly rooting for her.

The wedding plot was also very entertaining, and I really felt for Ruby at some point because wedding season is known to bring out the worst in people when it should be the opposite. Penelope was honestly a terrible person. I also appreciated the nod to proper use of cancer terms around those have had cancer because alot of it was familiar to me but some was new information that I really enjoyed learning.

Thank you so much to the author for the eARC!!

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars!

Okay normally I'm a casual reviewer in the sense that I take all the hobbled thoughts I had about the book and just put them together at the end. This is the first time I started writing a review mid read because I related to this too much and needed to write my thoughts down before I lost them. I don't have cancer but I deal with it everyday. I'm an oncology nurse so though I treat patients with cancer I'm not the one sitting in the chair. I'm giving the Benadryl I'm not feeling "the rush of Benadryl hitting your bloodstream, submerging your mind in cotton candy ... The chemo agent that gets pumped in through a port in your chest ... Look out rapidly growing cells, no one is safe ... Least of all your dignity." (I point this out because it's so accurate. How many times have I watched the Benadryl hit a patient and they lose track of the story they're telling? How many times have a I asked a patient if they wanted privacy during a port access or injection and they say they don't care about that kind of stuff anymore? How many times have I said if cancer wants you cancer is gonna get you? When the author said "cancer will still find a way" that's when I started writing this review.) I'm watching it happen and that's totally different from experiencing it. The way I understood and related to this book despite not having cancer was such a surreal experience for me because I could understand it from my own point of view as the nurse and from the patient's point of view in the treatment chair. I know what's it's going to do to the patient, I warn patients of what they're going to experience now and after the treatment when they get home. But I'm not feeling it, I'm not nauseous, I'm not jittery with energy from the dexamethasone at 2am when I should be getting rest.

And it wasn't just the oncology aspect that I related to, it was the feeling of loss and grief. Of losing who you once were and having to reconcile this new you. This person that you don't know yet have to build into a person you want to be, even though you've had this devastating event happen to you and are still trying to hold on to the old parts of you that you want to keep despite them slipping through your flagging grip. And you feel like everyone can see it, see your struggle. Like oil staining your hands, there's evidence of the person you tried to hold onto and eventually lost. And it feels like failure when you can't be who you were and aren't yet who you want to be. You've lost someone or something and the world is still the same yet you're totally different and now you have to go on and make new choices that you're not ready to make. You're still living in the ruins of loss so you tell yourself "I'll be ready when my life sucks less" (another line I related to all too much) but who's ever really ready?

To me unfortunately cancer and loss/death kind of go hand in hand so though I couldn't relate to the disease I could relate to the emotions. I felt Ruby's confusion, pain, and anxiety. So many lines in this book I read and thought "damn did Rebecca Brodkey interview me?" Because some lines just really hit me, they were either thoughts I've had, or things I've dealt with.

Outside of the story itself the writing style was so good, really right up my alley in terms of writing. Quick, witty, and articulate without the cringe social media speak other authors unfortunately sometimes use to say "hey I'm cool and relevant". The chemistry between eitan and ruby was perfect and although I think the romance couldve been a little stronger I recognize that this book was about more than just romance and I still appreciated it. Overall just a good book, right book right time.

Thank you to Rebecca Brodkey and the publisher for a free arc in exchange for an honest review. And sorry to everyone who read through that long ass rant

[Cozy Sabie · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There's this life waiting for me, out there. I know it. I've got a book deal. I go home to a partner who love some and doesn't mind taking care of me when I'm sick. My social calendar is brimming, replete. My body feels like mine again; like it did before. That life is just sitting there, at the top of a hill, waiting to be claimed. And I just haven't found a path to the summit yet."

GENRE: Romance; OwnVoice story about Cancer
RATING: 5/5
FORMAT: eBook & physical ARC
Tropes: Slowburn, Breast Cancer Survivor in her 20s, Friends to lovers, Maid of Honour x Best Man, One Tent, Manic pixie dream boy

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Review:
What a beautiful book. This is a book that talks about how it feels to get sick, written by an OwnVoice author who went through the same journey as the FMC (Ruby) and you can tell that it's something written based on experience.

Ruby has to grapple with the fact that her life changed overnight while she was sick and deals with the fact that her life, body and everything in between feels like it's no longer hers. I related to so many things in this book because getting an illness, whether it's chronic illness, cancer...etc. comes with a lot of similarities and differences.

It's the way people treat you differently and the way you feel your previous life no longer fits you anymore. Ruby goes through this journey of realising that her friends were never truly there for her and that she isn't the same person anymore.

Oh and Eitan? What a lovely relationship and the way it comes to be? He makes Ruby realise she is worth so much more than she thinks and they help each other in smaller ways. I'd have loved to read his POV but this was a story focused on Ruby's journey, her healing and her life after cancer.

We truly do need more OwnVoice stories in terms of Cancer, disabilities, mental health and everything under this umbrella because for those of us who have ever gone through anything similar, we can tell when its written based on experience and Rebecca truly wrote her heart and emotions in AtDBT. You can see it in the dark humour, in the trying not to give up but what's the point of it all, in the "I have hope but I can't have hope the way you expect me to", in the hospital visits and follow-ups you always have to do, in the way you want to be loved & accepted but always feeling like you're a burden and in so many more ways. It's in the fact that everyone deserves their happy stories, no matter the battles they've gone through in this life.

And finally, here's another quote from this book that I loved:
"It's life, isn't it? We're born and we die, and the time in between is what it is."

I was provided a free advance reader copy and I’m sharing my honest thoughts.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC received in exchange for an honest review.

Where do I even begin? This entire book felt like snuggling in your favorite blanket while you watch the rain fall. It tugged my heartstrings every which way: hope, anxiety, new beginnings and old endings. As someone who spent most of my life just outside Chicago, I loved that it played such a big role in Ruby and Eitan’s story. Getting to watch Eitan fall in love with the city was magical. (I can just imagine Ruby taking him to all the touristy spots on a date.)

The characters are the spine of AtDBT. As the protagonist, Ruby obviously takes the top spot, but it was a pleasure to be inside her head. She felt real in a way that’s often difficult to capture with words - fleshed out and flawed. I wanted to tear my hair out after she made certain decisions, but most of the time I just wanted to spin her around and cheer. I’ve never battled cancer or been close with anyone who has (and I’m thankful for that every day), but Ruby’s story made me run the gamut of emotions. Since Brodkey based it on her own experience as a breast cancer survivor, the medical aspects of the book are well thought out and described - there’s no softening the crueler aspects of being a cancer survivor, but this is balanced by the joy Ruby is beginning to bring back into her life.

I have to talk about Eitan; the man made her a mixtape, for god’s sake! He’s down BAD!!!! On a more serious note, I appreciated that he was a whole character with struggles and imperfections rather than a sexy, surface-level MMC for our FMC to fall for. There were so many scenes where I was cheering him on, and watching him grow alongside Ruby was beautiful.

The only reason this book wasn’t a 5-star read was because the conflict felt a little off at times. Ruby refused to let Eitan help because she was pretending nothing was wrong, but she acknowledged multiple times that she needed help…when there was a man begging to let him help her right there! Miscommunication and purposeful avoidance really irritates me, but I was so glad when they made up.

A final moment for Louise, Alma, and Calliope. I love crotchety grandmothers with hearts of gold, and I know Alma, Calliope, and Ruby’s friendship will last forever. Mostly on its own merit, but partially because good gossip can bond people together for life, and knowing Penelope as well as they do means they’ll never run out of conversation starters.

Brodkey has demonstrated her skill in both the fantasy and romance genres, and I for one can’t wait to see where she goes next. (I loved the premise of Ruby’s book…perhaps sci-fi is in Brodkey’s future?)

[Nicola Frasier (nikswordsonpaper) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not your ordinary romance, but a book about survival and finding yourself again. About having to return to normal life after something life changing - something that could've been fatal - even though it seems impossible.

"It feels like I'm becoming a new person. There's the old me, and there's this new version I will be. But I'm in the middle of the transition, so I'm not that new person yet, and I'm not my old self. And it's - painful."

Ruby is a cancer survivor who lost touch with her friends during treatment. To integrate back into society, she tries to pick up where she left off before the treatment. Desperate to get her old life back, she somehow ends up being convinced to be an unofficial wedding planner for her previous bff alongside Eitan - the dashing best man. He seems so bubbly and confident at first glance, but as they navigate the wedding planning together maybe they understand each other better than they thought. As she tries to regain her previous friendships, and battling pressure of cancer returning, was her old life really what she wants? Or is it time to forge something new - a life of a survivor.

"At any moment we're approaching death, no matter which way you slice it. All we have is this time now, and this life that we have no choice but to live."

The main reason I loved this book was that beneath the dark humour that Ruby used to hide her grief and struggles, she was a woman who wanted to be loved. She deserved a life where she could be herself and build a new foundation for more genuine friendships. I resonated with her trying to fit in with groups of people, desperately seeking connection. In true heroine fashion, she spent this book finding herself and coming into her new body and creating a new life from the bottom up. A strong life and will that can only be born out of survival.

"Maybe the pain of an ending is worth the euphoria of a beginning. Maybe I need to see for myself. Maybe what I want is stronger than what I fear."

Though this is labeled as a romance, the friendships and journey post surviving cancer far surpassed the romance. I was glad she was able to find someone who understood the isolation that is a side effect of having or knowing someone who has cancer. But the journey of self discovery, renewal and surviving was the main story in this. All in all, it was beautiful and healing but if you're expecting a heavy romance then this is not for you!

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've finished reading my ARC copy of 'All the days before tomorrow'. This is a contemporary romance written by Rebecca Brodkey.
ATDBT is a cancer rom-com, so check the content warnings if you're sensitive to these kind of subjects.

"I am healthy," I whisper. "There is no cancer in my body,' I repeat over and over.

A story about love and tradegy, but realistic? Yes please! This story feels like the bible to me. I might not have cancer, but I've been sick all my life and very sick for the last six years and I can relate to many of the problems the FMC has to deal with. It is refreshing to read a book that is also a voice for a group that is often a taboo. Also.. the e-book pre-order royalties will be donated to a cancer non-profit called; Stupid Cancer.

"You think the world can't lose faith in you if you lose faith in the world first."

This story is about Ruby. Ruby was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 29. She lost her boyfriend, had to move into her parents basement and her friends all decided not to show up. When she's finally back to being (a new form of) herself, she tries to find her way back to her old life. She notices that she doesn't seem to fit anymore, but the question is if that's a bad thing or if Ruby only thinks it is.

"Save your dreams for things that can actually come true. Otherwise you're living in a nightmare."

This is a heartfelt story about how fragile life and health are. Nothing is certain and everybody needs a way to deal with this. Ruby gets a little help from a different cancer survivor, who made an indelible impression. It's a story about finding out who you are and what life can be, after actual tradegy has stared you down.
She also tries to steer Ruby away from what seems to be a very narcistic 'friend'.

"You say that your life isn't a tradegy, but it doesn't always have to be a comedy either. You don't need to hold the world at arm's length with jokes for the rest of your life."

This story is about finding renowed power and strength, finding who you are and what you like. What people fit in and which people don't. A story about being true to yourself and understanding you deserve all the good things life throws at you. Even love. This also means speaking up when you don't get treated in a good way.
Rebecca poured parts of her own experience in the story, making it even more realistic, but that also made me feel with Ruby even more. I think everybody needs to read a story with as much feeling as this one!

[Damla · Rating 4 out of 5]

🌸 Thank you to Rebecca Brodkey for providing me with an eARC of All The Days Before Tomorrow! 🌸

Miss Brodkey you have done it again and in a completely different genre from your debut as well!???

This romcom follows Ruby, a cancer survivor who tries to find her place in the world again, and, most of all, wants to be loved but is conflicted because of past experiences. Being her 'friend's' unpaid wedding planner appears to be the way for her to get back out there, and also have her manuscript get picked up by a high profile agent. And the groom's best man is quite the cute guy 👀

While this is a romance, I would say that Ruby's personal story along with the other very meaningful relationships she forms along the way are also so so beautifully written and it had me super invested in them. Ruby is a wonderful character, along with Calliope and Louise just to name a few. Penelope, while not very likeable, is very well written and I think is a great representation of toxic interpersonal relationships, where we convince ourselves it is what we deserve, or that there is some good part in that person out there that makes being treated the way you are worth it.

Ruby's own personal story of, on one hand, getting back into the world, but also being terrified of the cancer coming back and having so many habits in place to prevent exactly that was so impactful to read. I think when it comes to the stories related to cancer that I personally have read, we read about the process of getting the diagnosis, receiving treatment, but the reality of what happens afterwards and the fact that sometimes we lose people along the way was something I was not familiar with.

Rebecca Brodkey drew from personal experience in such a beautifully present way, there were certain passages where you can sense it came from somewhere, but it fits the story perfectly. (Don't get me wrong, not trying to romanticize the experience. I just mean she puts it into words very well-)

Eitan, my heart. How often do you get your crushing singing dancing through life to you??? 🥹🥹

Overall a really cute romcom that draws from personal experience with a beautiful message. And while there is romance, the incredibly wonderful friendships Ruby develops along the way are also highlighted a way that I love!!!

[Eren Valentine · Rating 5 out of 5]

My time reading this was definitely a rollercoaster of emotions. Watching the FMC trying to become who she once was before breast cancer, trying to get her book published, and trying to date... this girl has her struggles. I cried, I laughed, I wanted to hug the characters, I wanted to smack others, and am definitely going to be adding this to read again!

Ruby is a survivor, she's got the perfectly dark sense of humor that would make her easily my best friend. She's persistent in her want to get her book published and in wanting to regain her friendships. I found myself being able to relate in some ways to the FMC. I have not gone through cancer but I have had people I have lost to cancer which does also help me relate to Eitan. I myself had my time where I wanted to do better and try to interact with my friends to later find out their true colors. Ruby is strong and very human and it was something that I found I really appreciated in this story. No superpowers but persistence, strength, and dark humor.

Eitan was refreshing for an MMC. Powered by Burnt CDs, a walkman, and knowing that the best expression is sometimes really just said with music I definitely loved him. Upon first meeting him I was like huh okay, well there's gotta be more to him than the bathroom moment... I was right. Below the surface there is so much more and I absolutely loved getting to know his character through out the story. He's smart, kind, loyal, and so much more.

Neither of them expects for things to go the way they do. If you're looking for a book that features a strong FMC, breast cancer survive, touches on a heavy subject but also adds in humor with characters who truly do everything that we as humans do (joking during tough moments to get through it was definitely one) then I recommend it. There were characters that I met during the book that really made me realize back on my own friendships growing up and the realization as to WHY they aren't my friends. I've had the Penellope's in my life and I definitely need an Eitan and a Ruby.

Rebecca easily wrote another book that I couldn't help but absolutely love and makes me love the fact that she is an auto-buy author for me! Thank you Rebecca for beautifully being you.

[Jocelyn Delarosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Rating:⭐ 5/5
Spice Rating:🌶️ 1/5

This book...I am going to need a bit to recover from because...what do you even mean? From the start, Ruby felt so painfully real to me. I can't get over her. I don't think I ever will. The way Rebecca Brodkey writes grief, illness, survival, and the complicated process of figuring out who you are after something life-altering was honestly incredible. I think everyone who has similarly dealt with illness will feel this from the start. Ruby’s dark humor, her frustration, her loneliness, and the way she tries so hard to reconnect with the life she lost all felt so raw and authentic. I had tears in my eyes most of the time reading this. There were so many moments that hit me right in the chest, especially watching her realize that surviving something does not magically mean everything goes back to normal afterward...

And then there’s Eitan... I adore him. He brings so much warmth and softness to this story, but underneath that sunshine is someone carrying grief of his own. The relationship between him and Ruby felt so natural and comforting. I loved how he truly saw her, not just as someone recovering from cancer, but as a full person who deserved joy, love, and a future she actually wanted. Their chemistry is quieter and more emotional rather than super spicy, and it worked perfectly for this sort of tension built slow burn story and honestly made every moment between them feel even more meaningful. And their banter was so cute.

What really made this stand out, though, was how deeply real it felt. This is not just a romance. It is a story about identity, friendship, healing, and learning that sometimes surviving is only the beginning of figuring out how to live again. The friendships in this book made me emotional for very different reasons, and I wanted to scream at certain characters (Penelope...ew) while hugging others. Rebecca did such an amazing job capturing how messy relationships can become when life changes you in ways other people cannot fully understand.

This was emotional, funny, heartbreaking, hopeful, and incredibly honest. I laughed, I teared up multiple times, and I am still thinking about so many scenes they hit way too hard. Easily one of my favorite reads of the year.

[Eva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oof. This book is not some light hearted romantic comedy but a very heavy, very impassioned story about being human and mortality. About not taking life for granted even if the universe has seemingly given you nothing to live for. If you or someone you love has gone through Cancer, please be warned, this is heavy on the details and consequences of the big C.

Ruby is a 29 year old breast cancer survivor, trying to find her place in a world that has been cruel to her. Your true friends make themselves known during the hardest moments of your life and Ruby's friends sadly fell short. Desperate to reconnect and be the girl she used to be, she finds herself planning her old best friend Penelope's wedding, a co-maid of honour in name only. All of the work, none of the credit, none of the connection. The groom's best man, Eitan sees this faux friendship for what it is but more importantly, sees Ruby for the woman she is. Like calls to like when two people affected by the tragedy of cancer find solace in one another, understanding that only comes from lived experience. Ruby isn't prepared for her attraction or the growing feelings she has for Eitan, especially after so many people have let her down. Eitan isn't prepared to offer anything more than "now", battling his own demons. On more than one occasion, they are thrown together and forced to open up and together they begin to heal.

I really felt for Ruby. Her fears, her shame, her grief felt so incredibly real and human. There is nothing this book shyed away from. I wanted to give Ruby a massive hug and tell her she deserved so much more and to just be a friend to her. I'm so glad she found Eitan and I'm so glad Eitan was brave enough to fight for her.

The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars is I was disappointed they didn't spend more time together. The timeline was right but the frequency of our main characters properly intersecting fell short for me and while they definitely had chemistry, it would have been that more believable that they built on that if they spent more time with one another. I also would have liked an epilogue. I know this book had a message that happy endings are not guarenteed but honestly, Ruby deserved one!

[Kassyreadsalot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Title: All The Days Before Tommorow

Author: Rebecca Brodkey

Synopsis: a friends-to-lovers romance about cancer, healing, and love worth scouring the world for.

despite what you may have heard…

Ruby Hirsch is not a tragedy.

Sure, she lost touch with almost all her friends during the slog of breast cancer treatment. And okay, her writing career also screeched to a halt. But she’s trying!

Ruby’s (former) BFF Penelope has everything Ruby lacks: a bestselling book, a doting fiancé, and a solid friend group. But Pen needs something that Ruby has in spades: time. Pen asks Ruby to help plan her upcoming wedding, and in exchange, offers to introduce Ruby to her literary agent, the jumpstart Ruby needs for her writing career.

Ruby must rely on the sunshine best man, Eitan, who seems to have everything figured out—except wedding planning. The more time they spend together, the more Ruby sees beneath his sunny bravado, and learns about a grief that mirrors her own. Eitan, meanwhile, sees the reality of her and Penelope’s friendship and begins asking questions that threaten the entire wedding—and the writing career that Ruby has hanging in the balance.

As the wedding, her feelings for Eitan, and her own dreams for a life post-cancer collide, Ruby must reckon with what she’s actually fighting for, and what it means to survive.

Review: This book is officially on my personal list of favorite romance reads ever! I was so emotionally invested in this story that I temporarily put aside my other books to continue this one! It had all my attention! This romance kept me on my toes, the chemistry, their interactions were absolute genius! This book felt like it could be a movie! I could picture everyone so clearly! Eitan was the perfect love interest it’s been a while since I have been in love with a male love interest! If there is one character I despised it was that bridezilla of this book! Ruby is a better person than me I would have said something to her with her poor treatment of Ruby! I adored Louise and Calliope! They are such great characters and couldn’t get enough of them! However, by the end it left me wanting more for Eitan’s and Ruby’s story! I couldn’t get enough of it! Is it greedy to ask for more? I will now read any book Rebecca Brodkey writes! She is incredibly gifted with her words!

Thank you to Rebecca Brodkey for giving me the opportunity to read this book in advance!

[Cheyenne Oleson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley, Rebecca Brodkey, and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy of All the Days Before Tomorrow in exchange for my honest review.

Some books tell a story. Others leave a mark on your heart. All the Days Before Tomorrow did both.

This novel follows Ruby as she tries to navigate life after surviving breast cancer, learning how to move forward when the experience has changed every part of who she is. Along the way, she meets Eitan, who is carrying his own grief and scars from cancer's impact on his family. What unfolds is a beautiful, emotional, and deeply human story about healing, love, loss, and finding joy even when life doesn't go according to plan.

What impressed me most was how authentic everything felt. The emotions were raw without ever feeling overwhelming, and the characters were flawed, messy, and incredibly real. Ruby's fears, frustrations, and hopes felt genuine, and I found myself rooting for her from the very beginning. Eitan completely stole my heart. Their relationship develops with patience and care, making every moment between them feel earned and meaningful.

While this is absolutely a romance, it's also so much more than that. It's a story about surviving something life-changing and figuring out how to live afterward. It tackles difficult topics with honesty, humor, and compassion, creating a reading experience that is both heartbreaking and hopeful.

There were multiple moments that made me tear up, and several that had me smiling through those tears. Rebecca Brodkey has created something incredibly special here. You can feel the heart behind every page, and it shines through in the writing, the characters, and the emotional depth of the story.

This is one of those books that stays with you long after you've finished reading. If you enjoy emotional contemporary romances that balance difficult realities with hope, healing, and unforgettable characters, I cannot recommend this enough.

A beautiful reminder that even after our hardest days, there are still so many tomorrows worth looking forward to.

[Lottie Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐⭐ 4.5/5 stars ⭐⭐

Anger, frustration, heartbreak, longing, romance, emotional crisis... All the Days Before Tomorrow had absolutely all of it, and I am not okay. Not even a little bit.

Ruby is a character that I want to wrap in cotton wool and also cheer on from the rooftops simultaneously. I won't throw the word "survivor" around loosely, but that is exactly what she is. A fighter navigating a world that feels like it's constantly setting traps for her, whether that's skin products, alcohol, outdoor environments, or just the ever-present fear that something, anything, could trigger a relapse. Rebecca Brodkey portrays that reality with such candour and honesty, and you can feel her own experiences woven through every page.

Eitan... okay, I'll be honest, I was ready to write him off early doors. But this man slowly, quietly won me over. Watching him be the most devoted wing man to Ruby while carrying his own struggles? Genuinely lovely. And the mixtape. THE MIXTAPE. Someone talk me down from the ledge, please.

Louise, though. My god, Louise. A woman with a craving for hotdogs and a laugh I could practically hear through the pages, and she has claimed a permanent piece of my heart. I was not ready for where her story went, and I am still processing it. A cheeky epilogue about all the mischief we didn't get to see? Rebecca, just a thought. No pressure. (Pressure.)

And then there's Penelope. The mean girl that every one of us knew and loathed in school, the one all the parents adored while she quietly treated everyone around her as disposable. Circling her feels like mistaking a dusty rock for a star, and the way she treated Ruby and Louise had me genuinely frustrated.

This was so close to a five-star read for me. Life got in the way of me absorbing it the way I wanted to, and miscommunication as a trope is very much a personal bugbear... but even with that, this book tugged at every single one of my heartstrings. One to absolutely add to your list.

Thank you to Rebecca Brodkey for providing this ARC of All the Days Before Tomorrow in exchange for my honest review.

[Jenna ♡ (Jenna's Corner) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I had all of the words to describe how I feel about this book. I'm no stranger to Rebecca Brodkey's writing- but this novel is a testament to love, a human hunger to live, and the city of Chicago.

Out of the cast of characters we have in this novel, Ruby is a shining star. You can tell Ruby's mindset was rooted in the authors personal experiences, because there is no way someone could dream up the things Ruby went through. It was deeply emotional, vulnerable, and jaw dropping. That being said, I want to hug the shit out of her! Her perfect match was found in Eitan. He is the definition of 'to be loved is to be known.' It was almost like every time I read his name Kiss Me by Ed Sheeran started playing in the background. He is everything to me!!

I could not get enough of Calliope and Louise. I want more more & more of them! That being said, the ending ruined me. I'm not one for spoilers, and letting you know this is a HEA, but my goodness it was not without heartache! I'm craving a Chicago Style hotdog & I may just have them toss 2 pickles on the top.

Penelope can fuck right off. I've never wanted to punch a character more in the throat. She's got it coming, karmically!

If you want a book that feels like genuine romance (not just 100% unrealistic situations where everything magically works out) this is the book for you. I learned so many things about what cancer patients go through, that I feel my eyes have opened. Simply put, I think every woman should read this book!!

This book is not just “a story about a girl who had cancer" it’s 343 pages of "I want to live but I'm not quite sure how to find myself, but maybe I'll meet her along the way" and it was easily one of the most beautiful books I've ever read.

Big smooches to that author, Rebecca Brodkey, for letting me be an ARC reader. I HIGHLY suggest you pre-order this book or snag it when it comes out on June 2.

I promise to never lose sight of all the days before tomorrow <3

[yapping_about_bookz · Rating 5 out of 5]

First I want to start by saying thank you to Rebecca for giving me this opportunity to read this book. I didn't really know what to expect from this book because this is the first book I've read where cancer is involved.
I honestly loved this book. It's so unique and I loved both the characters. I also loved the fact that Eitan is bi, you don't really see that often in books that aren't LGBT:)

This book really opened my eyes and made me really think about the fact that cancer occurs not only in older people, but also in younger people.

The way I felt protective over Ruby was craaaazy, I just wanted to protect her and scream at everyone who was rude towards her and especially Penelope. The way Penelope treated Ruby was absolutely disgusting and disrespectful. Penelope is a brat and she doesn't deserve Josh. (sorry not sorry)

This isn't just a story about someone with cancer. No it's about a woman who got the most heartbreaking and terrifying diagnosis when she was just the age of 28. She went through (I think) everyone's worst nightmare, alone.

This story is about building yourself up again, to learn yourself again, to go back in a society only to realize you'll never truly belong because of that diagnosis. It's fighting for happiness, for your own happily ever after.
In a way, I could recognize myself in Ruby and the way she was so angry at society. Because as a late-diagnosed autistic person, I personally struggle very hard with this in every day. Living in a society that is not made for people who are different and/or carry a heavy backpack (if you know what I mean) is simply exhausting, almost killing. I know it obviously isn't the same situation.. But I could feel and understand her rage.

I'm not gonna lie.. I was relieved when I read that the author, unlike Ruby, did have good friends and a loving husband who supported her.

This book has a special place in my heart. Thank you Rebecca for writing this book. It's such an unique, heartwarming but also strong and emotional book.

[Greer · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, I would like to thank Rebecca Brodkey and her team for sending me an advanced copy of this book. The plot and blurb immediately caught my attention, and I’m very glad I got the opportunity to share my thoughts with you all!

This is a book that expands on the feelings of being a survivor, and how trying to find your place in the world after illness can be an extremely messy and jarring process. Don’t get me wrong, this is a romance book, but it is also so much more than that.

We follow Ruby, who is a breast cancer survivor in her 20s, trying to figure out how to get back to her life before cancer. Because of her wealth of free time, she is roped into planning her old friend’s wedding with the promise of being introduced to a literary agent on the condition that the wedding goes well. We meet Eitan, the best man, and Ruby’s ticket to getting back into the world.

Brodkey clearly put so much love and thought into creating Ruby and Eitan and it really shows. Ruby is messy, she’s vulnerable, and such a realistic portrayal of not only a young woman, but a young woman struggling with severe illness. I appreciated so much that we got to see her be angry and be emotional about something that no one should have to go through, instead of forcing toxic positivity.

Eitan is also so thoughtfully composed, and we really get to understand why he is the way he is. I absolutely loved him!! While there were some moments that had me wanting to scream at him, but we as the audience know why he this is the way he has reacted, so I felt okay with the resolution we were given.

I think the romance between the main characters really worked for me, because it wasn’t built solely on chemistry, but also mutual understanding of the struggles they each have faced.

This was all round a wonderful read that has you immersed in a beautiful and reflective story about hope, love, and healing. 100% recommend picking this up!

[Elisabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

[NetGalley eARC] There’s sooo much to take in for this book. There is such a pureness, rawness to our protagonist Ruby’s story, especially knowing that it was largely written with the author’s experience in mind about her own cancer journey.
I adore Ruby: her wit, her introspection, her courage in moving forward in awful and anxious situations. At the start of story, Ruby is cancer-free, post-mastectomy, and learning how to navigate a “normal” life when everything has fundamentally changed.
Determined to integrate herself back into the social world, she’s abruptly asked by a former friend to be a last minute bridesmaid slash wedding planner. Here, she meets a groomsman, Eitan: someone familiar with grief and cancer, someone warm and sunshiney, and who takes it upon himself to help Ruby with her social bucket list. Amidst the wedding planning and ventures, there’s an immediate chemistry and fun antics, and I appreciate how the author brings these events to life with an air of dark humor and vulnerability.
It feels so special to follow Ruby’s journey. Her path is not necessarily linear; not simply an upwards trajectory, but about the small moments of strength, growth, and decisions that help her feel more comfortable in the world and in their own body. Also, the best part of the book is definitely the relationship between Ruby and the bride’s grandmother, Louise. A fellow cancer survivor, completely no nonsense and grumpy in a fabulous way. The moments and lessons they share feel the most pivotal in this book.
Eitan was a lovely complement in the book, though I found the push and pull —“should I or should I not”— to be a bit frustrating. I understand that life and emotions aren’t necessarily consistent, but it was hard to understand the characters and some of the harsh or impulsive choices they made. However, I enjoyed the story arc overall, and found the prose to be quite beautiful and poetic. And I found the ending to be absolutely perfect in all its facets!

[Pandorameetsbooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story is beautiful, in every way that it could be.

The way that this story is told is incredible; there's humour, dark as it is at times, which, when you've had your left ripped out from under you, a lot of people fall back on. It's a love story yes, but, and while the relationship that grows through the book is nice, it's almost like that relationship is secondary, because the love story, the true story that is being told, is with Ruby and herself. She has to come to terms with this new version of herself, and as they say, you can't love someone else, until you truly love yourself.

I think this story is going to resonate more with people who understand the FMC, and it's not just cancer survivors, either, but for anyone who has had a diagnosis that changes your life. Because the person you were, and the person you become during and after are different.

I was 13 when I first started noticing things, breathlessness, tired for no reason, 13 when they started brandishing the word cancer around. It wasn't, and I was lucky with that, but the diagnosis that came after, a lifelong condition, it changes you.

Reading Ruby's story, the lost friendships, and the anger, and the pain, the mistrust of the man that want's to step into your life, but even when you are so desperate to be loved, the idea of accepting it is terrifying when everyone else has walked away.

Watching her growth, her acceptance, making friends that actually cared, and weren't just using her, was beautiful. It was like reading my own life right there and knowing your not alone.

The writing is also incredible, the love story itself, done so well, though, I am really tired of the final act breakup, even if I do understand it in this instance, I couldn't help but rolling my eyes. God this story was soul crushing and healing all at the same time.