We all remember the ice bucket challenge to raise funds for ALS. Lisa Genova has written an exceptionally informative and captivating novel that tells the story of a renowned concert pianist who is diagnosed with ALS. In Every Note Played the reader follows this man, Richard, as he slowly looses the ability to play the piano, to use his arms and legs and eventually his muscles for breathing. His story, and also that of his family, is riveting and upsetting. I now have a deeper empathy for those afflicted with ALS and pray that a cure can be found soon. I highly recommend this book. For fans of Still Alice, this is another excellent novel by Lisa Genova.
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I picked Lisa Genova's "Every Note Played" because it was a deeply personal story for me, since my Father had ALS. He passed away in 2000, and I wanted to see if this book would show the advancements in treatment and improvement in aids for people living with this most horrible disease. The book did so much more, as I continued to draw parallels in the lives of Richard, Karina and Grace and my family. The book is beautifully written, and very honest. Even though it stirred up many emotions, I am so glad I read it, and I feel others without my history will be glad they read it too. Thank you NetGalley for giving me an ARC to read and review.

Every Note Played is a beautifully written book that tugs on the heartstrings. It is obvious that Lisa Genova has done her research about the debilitating and deadly disease of ALS. She manages to intertwine a story of a broken marriage where each one blames the other for breaking the marriage and finds no fault within themselves. When ALS strikes one of them and the other is tasked with caring for them as the end draws near, they just may find who really is to blame and maybe they can forgive before it is too late.

A heartfelt insight about the ravages of ALS. You expect the ending, yet still are surprised. It gave me hope that humans are better people than we sometimes think.

First, thank you to NetGalley, Threshold/Gallery, and Lisa Genova for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All I can say is - Wow!! This book gripped me from the moment I started and kept me engrossed (and up late) throughout. I have read most of Lisa Genova's books and have enjoyed them all, this one included. Last Note Played is about Richard, a celebrated classical pianist and what happens to him, his career, and his estranged family when he is diagnosed with ALS. It gives you an inside, heart-wrenching look at the disease and its effects on the one suffering from it and those around him. I was moved to tears by the end of the book. However, the story is also uplifting as it deals with issues of family, forgiveness, and realizing what is truly important in life. The characters were portrayed realistically - all with strengths, but also weaknesses. This book provides insight into this debilitating and horrible disease and I hope it acts to spur on more research towards a cure.

Every Note Played by Lisa Genova. It is the mark of a great author who can take three basically unlikely characters and bring you to a point of tears over their trials and tribulations and endings. Learned quite a bit about ALS that was previously unknown to me. Also some theories of classical music which has it's own healing effects.

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for the opportunity to preview the book.

Another virtuoso performance by Lisa Genova. This book, about a concert pianist who contracts ALS, is the most difficult to read of her books. Halfway through I wasn’t sure that I could finish it. The disease is progressive and devastating.
The book then shifted to a family dynamic involving forgiveness and healing from past hurts. The ending of the book is very powerful.
Having watched a good friend succumb to ALS, I know how devastating the disease is. Lisa Genova did an especially good job of capturing on paper the slow and awkward speaking of a person with advanced ALS.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a prepublication version of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I loved Lisa Genova’s other books. I devoured them. I found this book to be good but for me it didn’t stack up to her other novels. Perhaps this is due to the fact that over the past few months I have read another book about ALS and watched a phenomenal very emotional documentary. This made it hard for me to get into the book and at one point I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get through another book on this topic. Then, about a quarter of the way through the book, it started to take on a personality of its own and I did want to keep reading. It was based on an interesting premise - what would we do for our ex-spouse in a dire situation? In general I found the book and the interplay between Karina and Richard and between Richard and his other caretakers to be very believable. As always, in this author’s books, emotions are real and raw. I just didn’t find this book as compelling as her prior successes.

Thank you to Netgalley and Gallery/Scout Press for providing me an early release of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a beautifully well written book, I read it in one day. Very touching perspective of ALS from both the patients and caregivers side, but also about the power of forgiveness. The characters were so strong and well rounded, and yet had that tragic human touch to them that made you want to cry with them. By the end I was left spent crying in my Kleenex, touched to my soul, and felt a better person for reading this little gem.

Richard has always been a disappointment to his father. Why couldn't he be a jock like his brothers? Even his international success as a concert pianist fails to win his dad's praise. In college, Richard met his wife Karina, a gifted pianist in her own right. Their relationship is plagued by Richard's need to be the best, and Karina gives up a promising career to be wife to Richard and mother to their daughter. After 13 years, the couple divorces, and neither is sad to be rid of the other. When Richard is diagnosed with ALS, though, they become the most unlikely of couples again. Unflinchingly real and beautifully written, this story will grab you by the heart and hold you until the final page. .

First, I want to thank Lisa Genova, Simon and Schuster, And Netgalley for providing me with this book so I may bring you this review.

Every Note Played by Best Selling Author Lisa Genova was an extremely emotionally difficult read for me. So many times I needed tissues to get through a scene. Like the main character in this book Richard my cousin also had ALS and choose to hid it. I didn’t find out til he passed. Lisa did an incredible and shared a beautiful story going into detail of what an ALS patient goes through medically, mentally, emotionally, how it effects relationships around him and the death of ones career. I am very grateful she wrote this book for those who are not educated on this disease. Now we have more compassion on what patients, caregivers and their families go through.

It is difficult to review Every Note Played, as difficult as it was to read it. In brief, it’s the story of a brilliant pianist, not long divorced from his wife, who is diagnosed with ALS, which, as everyone knows, is a death sentence. The story plays out the coda of Richard’s life, the interlude of his ex-wife Karina’s life as she takes care of him in his last, devastating months of constant decline, and the overture to her new life as a jazz pianist.

I had to put this book aside many times as I was so vividly reminded of the nine-month decline of my father, who died in 1968 of pancreatic cancer, the death of a former colleague from ALS, and the serious terminal cancer that is eating away at my dearest friend - a friendship of 51 years in duration. Death is a serious business. While no one really knows when they will die, we pray that our deaths not be as painful and dominating as Richard’s fictional one, and my father’s and friends’ were are and are - an inexorable counting of the days.

Yet painful as this story is, it is, with the terrible circumstances stripped away, a love and reconciliation and discovery story of enormous significance. Lisa Genova has created memorable characters down to those who appear only once or twice. The story could be non-fiction, her research and detailed characterizations are that believable. I will not forget this book. I recommend it highly.

I am grateful to Ms. Genova, NetGalley, and the publisher for providing me an advance review copy of this outstanding book.

I'm no concert pianist but having played the piano since I was 12 years old, I completely understand the fear of not being able to play the piano anymore or crochet or paint.

Every Note Played opens with Richard at his last concert and from there the story moves forward, between following Richard as ALS increasingly claims his body and Karina's life, interspersed with back flashes from when they were both at Curtis. The pacing of the story has a meandering, kind of exploratory feel to it when it comes to Richard's and Karina's thoughts of both the past and what lies ahead. There's no surviving ALS and the readers know that Richard is not going to get any better but despite this grim reality, I couldn't drum up enough sympathy for Richard knowing he's been a horrible husband to Karina and a very absent father to his only child, Grace. The true beauty of this book lies in how Karina, Grace and Richard find the ability to forgive one another through the difficulties of living with ALS and later on, the freedom to finally move on and pursue your dreams.

I really appreciate the amount of work that the author, Lisa Genova, put into this book and it showed especially through Richard's struggles with ALS. It's like you, the reader, is right there in the den in Richard's body or in Karina's or in Bill's. Lisa Genova successfully showed and with great detail exactly what ALS is all about. Because I couldn't put down this amazing read, I had a nightmare about being paralyzed and that it started with a tendonitis-like pain in my left thumb, which in real life, I was experiencing pain in my left thumb when I stretched it out and away from my hand. The pain in my left thumb is gone now after 2 days of not using my thumb to left click on the track pad of my work computer, thank God it wasn't anything serious.

In conclusion, if you want to know more about ALS without having to read lengthy medical texts, with excellent, well-developed characters, this is the book for you.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I went through an entire box of tissues on this one. This story is raw, painfully and beautifully told. Most people still don't fully understand the devastation the disease ALS strikes on the person and the family. Richard tore my heart in two. I understand his loss in the ability to no longer be able to do the one thing you have been passionate about your whole life. Karina showed such strength helping him even after all they been through in their horrible marriage. This is hands down a must read.

I wanted to read this book because of the subject ALS. The story had a good flow in telling how it all started. I’ve known a few people that suffered from ALS and know everyone’s journey is different but this gave one “family’s” story. There were a few surprises in the reason for the divorce and how they all acted.

Since we all know the outcome of ALS, it was hard to pick up this book. The frustration of that disease and its evil, relentless progression is tough stuff- hard enough for those who endure it, hard as well to sit and read it and know there is nothing to be done.

However, this is a wonderful book. The author is so articulate in her descriptions of both the tangible and the intangible, that I could feel the expectation, the joy, the fear, the frustration and humiliation of Richard and Karina. Their progression together through the disease and its endless challenges and adaptations required of both of them is a rocky path, but strewn with both regret and insight.

As I read it, it was so incredibly clear that the author has traveled this path, there is no way the ALS part is fiction.
The nice surprise was to read how she wrote about music; understanding it has always defied me. Her (pardon the pun) lyrical descriptions of the music, its simplicity and complexity, and of playing, of loss of playing was amazing. Her ability to describe aspects of music that always opaque and in a way that I finally could appreciate. This was a good counterpoint to the raw reality of the physical situation.

The last family scene was a lovely image, I hope that part was was not fiction.

This is another exceptional book from Lisa Genova. Every Note Played is about a man with ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. As a speech language pathologist, I know a great deal about this neurological disease, but that isn't a prerequisite of reading this book. The author spends a great deal of time explaining within a great story the symptoms of ALS, as well as a human side, as she is a neuroscientist,

The patient is concert pianist Richard Evans, who has placed himself and his music before everything else in his life. The story is great and I will look forward to Lisa's next book. I have read them all, and this stands out as a supurb read. You won't be disappointed.

Every Note Played is another exceptional book from Lisa Genova. This time her subject is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS, motor neurone disease, or Lou Gehrig's disease. I knew very little about this tragic neurological disease, but that is just one of the benefits of reading Genova's books. As a fiction-writing neuroscientist, she has an extraordinary ability to educate readers about scientific details and symptoms of the disease, but she also writes very realistically about the important human side of the patient.

The patient is concert pianist Richard Evans, who has placed himself and his music before everything else in his life, often to the detriment and neglect of his now ex-wife Karina and daughter Grace. His first symptoms of the progressive loss of muscle control that marks ALS begin as paralysis in his arms. His physical decline changes his life immeasurably, and while the author describes all of the things he can no longer do and the care and equipment he needs quite clearly, she also writes eloquently about his emotional and internal struggles. Richard's relationships with his father, ex-wife, and distant daughter Grace all come into play, giving the reader a total picture of the person who is far more than just a collection of symptoms.

Genova's Still Alice is one of my all-time favorite books, and Every Note Played is just as strong, earning a well-deserved 4.5 stars. I think it must be quite difficult to write a book about a person living with an eventually fatal disease, but the author does it very well, and gives the reader an understanding of the disease, regrets, and mistakes made, but also hope, forgiveness, and peace.

Thank you to Gallery/Scout Press and NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy of the book.

You might know Lisa Genova from her other works such as, "Still Alice", "Left Neglected", "Love Anthony" and my personal favorite, "Inside the O'Briens". Lisa Genova is best known for her ability to take medical fiction to a new high.

Her character's become your friends, family, loved one or you." Every Note Played" follows, Richard a professional, renowned classical pianist diagnosed with ALS. His entire life up until that point has been his music, his piano but ALS is cruel and he slowly loses his ability to play. His hands will never again touch the ivory keys and the music will no longer flow through his veins.

Richard keeps his diagnosis a secret and is in denial but he is quick to find out that while his mind is in denial his body isn't. He slowly starts to deteriorate and when he can no longer care for himself he moves in with this ex-wife, Karina who reluctantly becomes his caregiver. It is important to note that, Karina herself is a piano player and that their music is brought them together many, many years ago.

Richard and Karina navigate this new world of theirs in which they both had to adjust to his illness in order to make his life as comfortable as possible. Along they way there is self discovery and healing.

ALS takes and takes from Richards. It takes body, his dignity, his independence and his essence but it gives him something he never knew he was missing, something he never knew he wanted.
Genova wrapped the ending up perfectly and while this is my least favorite of her novels it is still worth the time and energy it takes. Just prepare yourself for an emotional journey as some self reflection.

Thank you to Lisa Genova for giving me a better understanding of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), and the devastation it leaves in its wake. Every Note Played is a beautifully written, and deeply emotional story about a concert pianist stricken by ALS. Richard quickly learns that his inability to play the piano is just one of the many freedoms and joys, ALS steals from him.

In her signature fashion, Genova gives us a glimpse of Richard's suffering, but also the toll the disease takes on his loved ones and caregivers. In this case, the primary … unpaid … caregiver is Richard's ex-wife, Karina. Richard and Karina were divorced for a few years and estranged when he learned of his diagnosis. Their only daughter, recently away at college, had only the slightest contact with her father before he moved back to the family home.

Every Note Played is pitch perfect. Gripping, raw, and even uplifting. It explores themes of trust, honesty, humility, forgiveness, resentment, and compassion. Like any book by Genova, I would highly recommend it. Just keep the tissues handy.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.