Thursday, November 29, 2012

Momentos: Mick's Journey Reviewed



I came upon this lovely review of Momentos: Mick's Journey
yesterday and I'm re-posting it here with Adara's permission. I know this is a tough series to read but it's very special to me and whenever I see a positive review I can't wait to share it.

5 ***** Star review on Goodreads by Adara O'Hare

Do not read this series out of order. This is book 3 of 3.


My God, these books just absolutely wreck me. Where Loving Edits leaves you knowing that what will come is inevitable, you don't actually see the worst things happen. The second book, Tono, starts after Mick's death has occurred, so you see the aftermath, and not the pain.

This book shows us the pain of loving someone slowly dying from the later stages of ALS.

This is actually what I expected Loving Edits to have in it (before I first read that story). And it's very truthful. It reads very quickly, and with such a joy of life for the most part. I didn't want to put this book down.

The first third of the book is Mick and Paul's meeting and how they fell apart initially. The second third of the book is Mick meeting Tono and how they fell in love. (This all chronologically took place before the beginning of Loving Edits.) The final third of this book then skips forward to immediately after the end of Loving Edits and continues from there, where we see Mick's final days and how he tries to keep Paul and Tono together. We see the tough decisions that Mick and Paul and Tono and Baxter (Paul's butler/surrogate father/friend) have to make. Then there is an epilogue which skips past the events of Tono and wraps everything up.

There are minor spoilers in this book for things which happen in Tono, so you really should read the books in order.

I absolutely LOVE the Basque series for its descriptions of the Basque country and Spain. (But then I've been there and I love the country.) Sanse (pronounced "sahn-say", the shortened version of San Sebastian) is as beautiful as it is described. And the bullfight described is exactly how they happen, too. (I had the opportunity to see a bullfight in Barcelona in 1992. I managed not to throw up.) But the rich culture just drips off the pages, and it's wonderful.

You honestly don't get the full impact of any of the characters except for Mick in this book because this is his story. There are chapters which are told from either Paul's, Tono's, or Baxter's point of view, but the true richness of those characters comes out in either Loving Edits or Tono. This story really is all about Mick and who he is to these people; their subtleties are pretty suppressed as Mick's journey is told.

If you know someone living with ALS (and I do), this is a must-read story. I cannot imagine the love and pain it takes to live with someone you love going through this sort of living hell.

Bless you, Mickie, for being able to write all of this down. I know it can't have been easy.

(I'm going to see if I can stop crying now.)

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