Necessary Arrangements
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Meet the Swenson sisters, Asia and Lucy, as different as night and day yet as close as sisters can be...who are about to face the greatest challenge of their lives.
Gifted and successful, Asia has always been the serious, got-it-all-under-control Swenson, who protected her clumsy sibling from the usual childhood scrapes. Lucy, six years younger, made up for her frequent mishaps with her infectious smile and sunny enthusiasm. Now, giddily in love and about to be married, Lucy has never been happier—until she learns that Asia’s illness has returned. Now Lucy must become the strong one, holding the family together while inside she’s in danger of falling apart. How can she get excited about planning her future when her sister’s future is so uncertain?
Asia likes to imagine herself as a superhero conquering her disease—Asia Jane versus the Cancer of Doom—but she can’t take on this fight without Lucy, her staunchest ally. Only with Lucy’s help can Asia seize each day and wring every drop of life from it—losing herself in giggles and adventures, opening up to new relationships and deeper connections. And nothing, absolutely nothing will stop her from walking down the aisle as her sister’s maid of honor.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Debut novelist Michna wastes no time getting to her subject matter: on the first page, Asia Swenson is told her breast cancer has returned and metastasized. As Asia braces herself to inform her parents and sister at a family dinner, her sister, Lucy, is preparing to announce her engagement. The plot charts Asia's struggle to fight her disease, the accommodations she must make at work and her unwavering goal to be the maid of honor at her sister's wedding. But the heart of the novel is the changing dynamics in the relationship between the sisters and Asia's unexpected budding romance with Brandon Peters, the "slick" investment firm colleague who takes over her clients when Asia is too sick to work full time. While these relationships are believable, the parents are cardboard constructions; especially the father, who is almost nonexistent, even when he's in the room. But the sisters' sensitive dynamic and the portrayal of Asia's manifold struggles ring true. It's hard to imagine readers finishing this with dry eyes.
