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The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes by Anna McPartlin

Release date: June 19th, 2014

Series: Rabbit Hayes #1

Pages: 368

Genre: Fiction

Here is a truth that can't be escaped: for Mia "Rabbit" Hayes, life is coming to an end ...

Mia-"Rabbit"-Hayes knows that life is hard for everyone. And she knows that she's one of the lucky ones. She loves her life, ordinary as it is. And she loves the extraordinary people in it: her spirited daughter, Juliet; her colorful, unruly family; the only man in her big heart, Johnny Faye. Rabbit has big ideas, full of music and love and so much life. She has plans for the world. But the world, it turns out, has other plans for Rabbit: a devastating diagnosis.

Rabbit is feisty. And with every ounce of love and strength in her, she promises that she will overcome. She will fight fight fight. She will be with those who love her for as long as she can, and she will live as long as she can with music and love and so much life. And as her friends and family rally round to celebrate Rabbit's last days, they look to her for strength, support, and her unyielding zest for life. Because she is Rabbit Hayes and she will live until she dies.

❝She wasn't angry or even that frustrated. She wasn't scared or worried. She wasn't bitter or vengeful. She was just sad to leave the people she loved most, especially her daughter. She had fought for so long, but finally she knew that she couldn't go on.❞

This was such a heartfelt story! Although even though I knew what this story is about and how it's going to end when I picked it up, I still cried like a baby at the end.

This was written lightly with a lot of jokes and humour, yet still had this deeply serious and sad undertone. This story gave me so much more than I expected - I really didn't expect Rabbit to tell her sad love story that ended because, Gosh, that was so unexpected and it really added even more sadness to this story.

I don't think I need to talk about what this story is about since the title says it pretty much all: Rabbit Hayes living her last days before cancer takes her.

It's a heavy book, dealing with heavy feelings. It's written from multiple POVs and it's truly hard sometimes to read about how people that are close to Rabbit deal with her dying. It's hard, but these stories don't only happen in the book, unfortunately, and this is why I think it's good to read stories like this here and there.

This is not as much about Rabbit as her, but generally how people close to someone with cancer take it and how they deal with it. It felt like I became friends with all of these people, so the ending was all that harder for me because I, too, felt like losing a friend.

I don't think you can stay cold-hearted while reading this. It just crawls deep under your skin if you like it or not and I think you can never truly be fully prepared for someone's life to end - just like I wasn't truly prepared for the ending of this book.

The only reason I gave this book 4.5 stars is because this book was written for multiple POVs and sometimes it was hard for me to tell who is who because there were so many people.

Anna McPartlin is an international best selling author, currently published in 15 languages across 18 countries. Pack Up The Moon and The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes were nominated for Irish book awards. Rabbit Hayes also won a silver readers book award in Germany. In the UK it was a Simon Mayo and Richard and Judy book club pick and in the USA it was a Barnes & Nobel Book of the Month.

In the last few years Anna has been honing her TV scriptwriting skills working on medical drama ‘Holby City’ for the BBC (UK), legal drama ‘Striking Out,’ for RTE (IRE) and historical adaptation Jesus His Life for History Channel (USA).

Anna was nominated for an Irish Film & Television Academy award for her one off bi-lingual drama ‘School Run,’ and is currently in development with Hot Drop Films / Treasure Entertainment and funded by Screen Ireland for the film adaptation of ‘Rabbit Hayes.’ She is also in development for a crime series ‘Serious Crimes,’ with Blinder Productions (Virgin Media) in IRE. A historical crime drama with Noho Film & TV (UK) and ‘Richter,’ an RTE/NZ TV co-production crime drama with Blinder Productions.

Anna’s first children’s book the ‘Fearless Five’ came out May 2019. Her next fiction novel ‘Below The Big Blue Sky,’ is on shelves in UK and IRE in April 2020 and she is currently working on her ninth commercial fiction title.

Anna started out briefly as an actress and stand-up comedian but although her heart wasn’t in performance, she revels in storytelling and shining a light in dark places. Anna’s USP is in tackling difficult subjects with understanding, empathy and humour that spills onto every page.