I’ve just finished reading The Best of Us, and I have so many emotions running through me. The incredible sadness for Joyce Maynard, losing someone she loved so deeply, and who loved her in return. The thought of the suffering Jim endured, day after day, with the pain of the pancreatic cancer and the effects of the chemo, and the strength and determination they both demonstrated, fills me with awe. I think of his children, now without a father who loved and cared for them, who will never see his grandchildren grow and thrive. The difficulties of clearing out the details of someone’s entire life – I just can’t imagine how difficult that would be.

This memoir is beautifully written, an honest and often hard to read story of the marriage of Joyce and Jim, and their reactions to the painful journey of Jim’s battle with pancreatic cancer. She details the treatments, the dashed hopes, her own perceived failures, and the many successes in their life together. I’ve always loved Joyce Maynard’s writing – ever since I read Baby Love back in the early 80’s – and I felt this was a wonderful tribute to their love and marriage.

I approached this book with some hesitation. I had heard many great things about it, but I still had my doubts that a story about two older people who finally find their soulmates and then one of them dies a long and painful death could be anything but depressing. I was pleasantly surprised. I found this memoir as gripping as a thriller, and became quickly engrossed each time I returned to it. I didn't find it depressing at all. It was surprisingly uplifting. I was deeply moved by this starkly honest account of how two people met, fell in love, and then soon after, faced death together. It was fairly long, but never dragged. The story moved along at just the right pace. I'm still not quite sure how she did it, but it was brilliant. 
In my opinion, a great book is one that makes you think and feel and brings light to some part of your life. This memoir qualifies. It certainly gave me a much deeper understanding of how people deal with death, both their own, or a loved one's. I have dear friends, an older couple, who recently went through a very similar experience. The husband had prostate cancer and I observed how they both tried to cope with this nightmare. At the time, some of what they chose to do seemed surprising or baffling, but after reading this memoir, I now understand their behavior much better. Reading this book, I recognized many of my friends' reactions to the cancer as it progressed. I saw the heartbroken look in the wife's face, the pain and stumbling gait of the dying husband, but also the determination to enjoy what time was left for them. It had always been evident that these two were not only still deeply in love, but also best friends. I watched their suffering as they gradually gave up hope for a cure and faced the remainder of time together. There were many similarities with the experiences of Joyce Maynard and her husband. With these new insights, I hope to be a better friend and support if I find myself in this situation again. 
Joyce Maynard teaches workshops on how to write memoirs, and I have a feeling that after reading this book, many more people will want to learn from her. What an amazing gift she has. I hope she spawns many more talented writers of memoirs. I intend to read all of her books soon. 
Highly recommended.

I should have finished this weeks ago but life got in the way. That said, I extend both my thanks for the review opportunity and my deepest apologies for the delayed response to the author, publisher, and NetGalley. 

If you're a fan of memoirs and true love then this a book for you. Focusing primarily on Joyce's late in life marriage to Jim, The Best of Us tells their short but incredibly sweet love story. There were moments where I felt the author got repetitive in her storytelling; however, for the most part I really liked this one. Well, as much as one can like a book with such a devastating theme and end point. 

Thankfully I've never had most of the heartbreaking experiences Joyce details with the pages of this book, and prayerfully I never will. I think it is wonderful that she is able to open her heart and bare her soul for others though. To simply get a small peek inside the life that she and Jim shared, albeit briefly, allows readers like me not only a better understanding of what it's like to go through the types of trials they dealt with but also undoubtedly gives hope to many others. 

To Jim, may your strength and passion for life always inspire others.

This book is a step out of my normal path of reading. I was intrigued by what this memoir could hold. I was not disappointed. Joyce Maynard’s writing is real and vulnerable. She shares her life and last love in rich and vivid detail. She opens the door to what becomes an agonizing saga of finding love and being forced to let it go. I grew to care very much for Joyce and her second husband who marry later in life. There’s joy, sadness, delight, and heartache. 
I’m glad I veered off my path. This book was very well written, held my attention throughout, and inspired me to live each moment fully.

I received a copy from NetGalley. All thoughts were my own. I was not compensated for this review.

This is a beautiful, heartbreaking read. Just when Maynard knows she has found the man she knows is meant for her, he gets cancer. This was the story of Maynard and Jim's journey and how she dealt through all of it. I enjoyed her writing and her descriptions of the places they lived and visited. I ached for her and hugged my husband just that much tighter.

Joyce Maynard writes about her marriage in her late fifties to the love of her life, Jim. She writes this memoir so beautifully and honestly. It is a true love story and my heart broke for Joyce because she did so much to try to save Jim from the horrible pancreatic cancer that eventually took his life after only a few years of marriage. To finally find true love only to have it taken from you so quickly is heartbreaking. Being a caregiver myself to my elderly mother, I have, thankfully, not had to go through what she did in her care of Jim. I was amazed and in awe at her courage and determination to make him better and with the tenderness and loving way that she did it. This is a very moving and emotional read that I do highly recommend.

I received an advance review copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Joyce Maynard's memoir of her husband's battle with pancreatic cancer hit awfully close to home. My father died of pancreatic cancer almost eight years ago. It's a particularly nasty cancer because it is almost always a death sentence, and it can move brutally fast. I have vivid memories of my father through different stages of his illness, which in his case lasted relatively long -- two years. Thankfully, by now, when I think of my father I don't tend to think about his illness but rather I remember him as a person. But The Best Years of Us brought me back to the last two years of his life. Those were terrible times in many ways, but they are also an important part of my relationship with my father and my own life journey. 

I couldn't have read Maynard's book a few years ago, but with some distance I was able to read it and to get a lot from it. Maynard and her husband Jim's journey felt so familiar. Not the specific medical procedures he went through, but the mental and emotional roadmap they traveled. The gut punch of the diagnosis, the hopeless hope that drove them to endlessly quest for a cure, the brutal relentless sickness, the bittersweet mental shift and odd peacefulness that comes with accepting that there will be no miracle cure, the starkness of the last few days and the grief that keeps creeping up unexpectedly. It's such a common but deeply personal experience. It was somehow helpful to read Maynard recount her experience. When Maynard describes her early life, and the road that led her to Jim in her late 50s, I suspect that we wouldn't have had much in common at that time. But if I met her now, I feel that there is so much we would have to share.

This is not a book for everyone. It gets quite detailed at times. But I know that it will speak to many. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

This was a very strong book. It is a love story, love that came later in life. Only to have it snatched away by cancer. The author gives us insight to her life during this time, her thoughts, emotions, etc. It was very sad but a very good read. It gives a glimpse of pancreatic cancer, the toll it can take. The stress, the sadness, etc. Outstanding book to having love and losing it in such a painful manner. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

Memorist/novelist Joyce Maynard is willing to show the worst of herself in The Best of Us

Joyce Maynard’s latest memoir tells of a love story cut down in it’s prime: Her husband Jim Barringer is diagnosed with the very deadly pancreatic cancer just after their one-year anniversary and is gone within two years. They were together less than six years total (her first real relationship in two decades). That’s a lot of numbers to describe a fast and hot love in later life that quickly moved to letting go.

Maynard describes years of unsuccessful singlehood, the tragic story of giving up her two adopted Ethiopian daughters, and the unlikely joining together with Barringer in her late fifties with whom she imagined growing old. Always brave enough to tell the often ugly truth of her selfishness and almost singular self-centeredness, Maynard’s gift of self examination shows the difficult task of promising to love and stay with someone “in sickness and in health.” 

Wendy Ward
http://wendyrward.tumblr.com/

Every Joyce Maynard book I ever read, I have loved! She writes as though you are living inside her books. You see the things she describes, you feel the things each of the characters are feeling. She's simply brilliant in my opinion.

This book was even better than I imagined it to be. When the publisher sent it to me, I was shocked! I didn't open it for two weeks because I knew this story was going to be different. I knew I was really going to feel everything she poured into this book and I did. I felt every happy moment, every tear, and everything in between.

She's led a remarkable life and if I am ever asked again if you sit and have dinner with any author who would it be, I would say Joyce Maynard.

I won't even bother describing the details of this book because nothing I can say will add any justice to the writing of Ms. Maynard.

Thanks so much to NetGalley, Bloomsbury, and Joyce Maynard for the opportunity to read this book.

Giving 5 stars to a book about someone dying from cancer always seems wrong, but this is an amazing book by such a powerful writer. I've always loved Maynard's books and really loved the honesty and clarity with which this book was written.

Joyce and Jim found each other later in their lives, after accumulating all the baggage that we do when we are in our 50s. There's was a true love story - the finding Prince Charming after all the frogs, the happy ever after. Until cancer.

This is a long book - almost 450 pages - but it is so worth the read. Besides Maynard's wonderful writing, this book, although so incredibly sad, is also uplifting and gives us all yet another reminder how we should cherish each other and every moment we are given. I loved Maynard's honesty - writing about how hard it is to be the caretaker and how hard it is to voice those feelings.

Highly recommended - but keep the Kleenex nearby.

I really enjoyed this lovely bittersweet memoir - Joyce Maynard has such a way of writing about her love that it absolutely floored me at times. It was such a beautiful ode to her husband and their all too brief marriage. I would recommend this to anyone who is dealing with big, heavy grief, and anyone who has ever been in love.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for a free digital copy to review – all opinions are my own!

Joyce Maynard takes us on an emotional roller coaster ride in her book, The Best of Us (read synopsis here). The book is painfully honest and the reader really gets a sense of Maynard’s deep love and adoration for her husband. Within eighteen months of their marriage, her husband is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The disease progresses quickly and three weeks shy of their three-year anniversary, her husband passes away.

I enjoyed The Best of Us. As I’ve said here, here, and here, I’m always drawn to books with this subject as the main topic. I feel like reading different caretaker’s perspectives really helps me understand and remember some of my thoughts and feelings as I watched my own mother battle this horrific disease. While I didn’t lose my spouse to cancer, there are still many parallels that seem to continually surface when I read these types of stories that are relative to my own journey through cancer. I appreciate Maynard’s honesty; she truly puts her heart on the page. There were many times I was trying to blink back tears – slightly awkward and uncomfortable when on an airplane surrounded by strangers! But that’s also the sign good writing!

There were times where I felt like the story dragged on a little to long. Maynard is a writer by trade so it’s clearly not hard for her to create very descriptive, heavily detailed paragraphs. Some of it was fine, but it also tended to drag me away emotionally because it was just too dense and didn’t add anything significant to the overall story. At almost 450 pages, I was just ready for the story to wrap up.

Overall, The Best of Us is a very touching tribute to the power of love, connection, and the ultimate promise one can make to another person – in sickness and in health. It’s deep and emotional and will make you appreciate the hope one has when faced with death.

The Best of Us is a heartbreaking memoir about the author's late-in-life marriage to a man who eventually died of pancreatic cancer. It is all at once a touching tribute to the simple things that make marriage beautiful (dinner and a glass of wine, taking long drives together, seeing folk concerts) and a sorrowful testament to how fragile human life is; how, in the span of a few months, everything can fall apart. How, even so, it's still worth it.

I was moved by this book, but, at the same time, I felt Joyce Maynard hard to connect with. She writes about how painful it was to adopt two girls from Africa and having to give them up - I can't imagine anyone I know having that problem. Then, with her husband's cancer - it gave me whiplash, reading about all the doctors across the country they visited, all the different things they tried to keep her husband alive. The fact that they fought so hard was admirable - on the other hand, I also can't imagine anyone I know being able to afford taking on extra medical debt for unproven moonshot procedures on top of the mundane medical debt that already comes with cancer treatment. 

I'd still recommend it, I think, although it's a tough read. It made me want to hug the people I love extra hard.

This 448-page love letter highlighting Joyce’s abbreviated love story with soulmate Jim is one chock full of emotion and packed a powerful punch. This beautifully written tribute is simply stunning. I mourn Maynard’s loss and reading this book serves as a reminder to not take my own marriage for granted; it could all change tomorrow.

The book is also a reinforcement of the old saying “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” I will be  purchasing the audio so I can hear the words in Joyce’s own voice. I will have handy my box of tissues as this is one of those few books that made me cry.

The review and an interview with the author was published on Sept. 5 in the Palm Beach Post. See link below:

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/lifestyles/late-life-love-taught-author-joyce-maynard-what-marriage-really/iamZZeRU6g4gkpQnbFOygM/

I've never read any of Joyce Maynard's writings until this book, but unknowingly appreciated her work several months ago. I happened upon the movie "Labor Day" while it was being offered as a free screening to Amazon Prime members, and thought it was brilliant. When I noticed the book that inspired the movie on sale one day, I instantly snapped it up.

As Maynard states in this book, she is usually writing fictional stories, and those stories need to have some inherent conflict to interest the reader. Well, this is a work of non-fiction, an open and honest recounting of her husband's battle with pancreatic cancer. The major conflict here is that this woman has been searching for real love all her life, she finally finds it, and it is ultimately taken away from her due to her husband's terminal illness.

First of all, Ms. Maynard is a fascinating individual who really loves life. She takes a lot of chances, travels broadly and is a great communicator. She also is an extremely attractive woman. With all her talents and gifts, I was surprised that she felt the need to use a dating website to find available men. But, that's how she met her beloved husband Jim. 

There are a couple of things in the book that can potentially turn off the reader. For one, she adopted two girls (who were sisters) from Ethiopia before she ever met Jim. It didn't work out, so she gave them up to another adoptive couple. Another thing, she kept referring to the recent Presidential election and she and her husband's aversion to Republicans in general and Donald Trump in particular. The late great Johnny Carson, while always funny, stayed right in the middle with the butts of his jokes. He equally roasted both political parties, so you did not really know exactly where his own politics stood. In that way, you don't insult or alienate half of your audience. This is an autobiographical piece, and she did make clear her and her husband's political leanings throughout the book, since such an unusual Presidential election was taking place at the time of Jim's battle with cancer.

Ms. Maynard takes you intimately on her and her husband's journey from the cancer diagnosis through Jim's doctor visits, treatments, hospice and death. However, the distinct beauty of this book is the way they live life to the fullest together...right until the end. I think it was a wonderful way for her to memorialize the way she loved her husband, and as a kind of guide/roadmap for people going through the same agonizing experience that they did. This was a very special book that I highly recommend.

"Not until we learned of his illness, and we walked the path of that terrible struggle together, did I understand what it meant to be a couple - to be a true partner and to have one. I only learned the full meaning of marriage as mine was drawing to a close. I discovered what love was as mine departed the world."

The Best of Us by Joyce Maynard is a highly recommended memoir of the author finding true love in her late fifties and then losing her beloved.

In her late fifties and after two decades of being single, Maynard begins this honest memoir stating that she was done with love and marriage. Then she met Jim on Match(dot)com and quickly changed her mind. The first part of her account is a detailed, open examination of her life and failings. She is quite open with her poor life choices and the fall-out from some of those decisions. Jim accepted her as she was and gave her the support she didn't even realize she needed. After they married it seemed that she finally had the love and a true partner for the rest of her life.

Then, just after their first anniversary, Jim was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and their dreams changed. For the next nineteen months they battled his illness together, including frequent hospital visits,  surgeries, and medication. Even as the narrative becomes increasingly painful and difficult to read, it also moves closer to acceptance of the inevitable heart-break end. Maynard celebrates her once-in-a-lifetime love and the heart-wrenching experience of losing him.

This is certainly a worth-while, well-written memoir. Maynard is extremely open and honest with her life and the choices and mistakes she has made. Some of these choices were rather impulsive and made without much forethought or consideration of the outcome or wisdom of her actions. The fact that she has openly written about some of these events indicts that she chose to do so despite the fact that they may reflect on how individual readers react to her. (It should be noted that Jim and Joyce were in a much better financial situation than many who face similar trials.)

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Bloomsbury USA.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2017/09/the-best-of-us.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2112584105

The Best of Us by Joyce Maynard is a riveting memoir and beautiful love story. It is a big story, about finding love again later in life when all thoughts of it ever happening had been relegated to the "I Wish" list, and then losing that "this-is-the-one" love far too soon in one of the most painful ways possible.

The story is honestly and well told. The author honors us by showing her humanness, vulnerability and strength by sharing her good, bad, and sometimes ugly sides equally. This intimate view makes it easy for the reader to empathize with her, or at the very least, respect her for what she has been through. Ms. Maynard tells of her decades alone following her divorce; meeting Jim and finding a true partner when she had given up on finding love again; the early days of their joyful exuberant love; their marriage and her struggle to be accountable to another; the diagnosis that Jim had pancreatic cancer; their journey together through the ups and downs of that battle; Jim's impending death; and Joyce trying to move forward again, alone, when she had found she liked being part of a strong, loving couple.

Uplifting, heart-wrenching, and wise throughout, this is one of the best memoirs I've ever read. If only everyone were lucky enough to be part of such a love, no matter how short the time they had together. Their love was truly special, and despite the horrible outcome, I'm sure each of them would consider themselves blessed.

I am so grateful to NetGalley, the author and Bloomsbury Press for allowing me to read and review an e-ARC of this beautiful book!

I was not familiar with the author or her previous works of fiction but this memoir intrigued me.  The author meets and marries in her 50s after some well meaning but disastrous relationships.  She and Jim are enjoying their newfound happiness, traveling the county and abroad.  The book follows their story until a fateful day when he is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  I was hoping that he would be a lucky one and a cure would be forthcoming.  How they dealt with his diagnosis, treatment and passing away was a true testament to love.  Many tears were shed during the reading of this memoir.