In the Pink: How I Met the Perfect (Younger) Man, Survived Breast Cancer, and Found True Happiness After Forty by Susan McBride 128 pages

I’ve known Susan McBride since her first book, “And Then She Was Gone,” was published in 2000. She is one of the sweetest, smartest and funniest people I know. Not to mention one of my favorite authors. She’s talented too. She can write in a variety of genres: police procedurals, young adult, cozy mysteries, magical realism, mysteries and nonfiction.

In this short memoir, she takes the readers on a journey, like she does in all her books, through some of the best times, and worst times, of her life.  (That can be the title of this review, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”  I don’t think Dickens will mind.) I remember when she met her husband, Ed, celebrated with them when they married, cried when she was diagnosed with  breast cancer, and attended almost every book signing when she published a new book. How she was able to write while undergoing cancer treatments still amazes me to this today.

Reading her words to describe those times was like reliving them all over again. She remembered them the same way I did. That’s one of the reasons I waited so long to read her memoir. 

Busy lives have gotten in the way, and I don’t see her very often. Thank goodness for Facebook and Christmas poems so I can stay on abreast of her busy life with writing, Ed, and their beautiful daughter, Emily, born in 2012. Where has the time gone?

I found her story uplifting and her attitude courageous.  I hope anyone who reads “In the Pink: How I Met the Perfect (Younger) Man, Survived Breast Cancer, and Found True Happiness After Forty” will find the same courage to forge ahead as Susan had done.  “In the Pink” receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.