“This collection of Mallory’s detailed diary entries describes the beautiful moments in her life (love, vacations, finishing high school, and going to college,) as well as the medications, hospitalizations, failing health, and uncertain wait to see if she could be cleared for a lung transplant.

It is a thoughtful selection that captures a key struggle Mallory grappled with: prolong her life by being cautious, following treatments exactly, and avoiding any choices that would put her out of reach of her medical team, or risk the pursuit of her own happiness to make her short years more profound and worth the accompanying struggles”

“Readers navigating chronic illness will especially appreciate Smith’s candid, angry, and occasionally dark-humored anecdotes of coughing up blood in public, undergoing embarrassing and painful procedures, processing body image insecurities and physical limitations as her condition declines, and fielding hope and disappointment as she awaits a double lung transplant. Smith’s musings on her eventual death and its impact on her family are particularly poignant. Acknowledging the privilege of having supportive parents able to negotiate with insurance companies, Smith soberingly notes that “patients who don’t have that are the patients who die as a result of bureaucratic bullshit.” Heart-wrenching entries from her mother, aunt, and boyfriend, Jack, detail Smith’s grueling transplant recovery and complications that led to her death. In an afterword, Jack movingly explores his grief and his relationship with Smith.”