I only gave 1 star to the book as I have read many books on death and this one really lacked some points I wished she might have elaborated more plus I didn’t like the writing style. At some point it felt like a short story and too much “god talk” for my taste. Reading about dying is not easy and it might be heavy at times. Death/Grief is an unique experience, so I will not judge this. For sure her feelings and experience are true. I did like chapter “certainty” which focuses on the opinion and experience of strangers who write her letters how each of them is relating differently to cancer and being on the verge of dying. She categories all these letters in 3 ironic/hard lessons that all these strangers tried to teach her: 1.One should not be upset, because the significance of death is relative 2.The cancer/dying experience is supposed to be an education in mind, body and spirit 3.“solution people” who were disappointed in why she is not saving herself with positive thinking and so on. The 4th category she highlights, are the letters/strangers who don’t talk why we die but who was there. The other turning point in her book is the question “when do I stop?” Here she refers to the treatment and drugs. She reflects in the book a short period of time and I would have loved her to elaborate more on her emotions here as it is not an easy decision to take. It felt rushed over. Another sentence that stuck with me was when one friend of her tells her “Don’t skip to the end” which I liked because from her telling she was already thinking of the end and not what happens or could happened until she dies. As for the title of the book, “Everything happens for a reason” I feel that she did offer some pages to the why she chose it but there is no true answer to it just that it really doesn’t make sense to say it someone is dying or at all in my opinion. The subtitle “and other lies I’ve loved” I didn’t really get which were those lies… Maybe they were to subtle written. At the end of the book there are some question to be used for a book club discussion, which definitely is nice, to reflect on them privately or friends who read with you. In the Appendix she gives some advice on how to talk, what not to say and how to behave in front of human who are dying and undergo difficult treatment. It was insightful and definitely valuable but it felt like a detached part of the book, like a blog post that was added there. I wished she would have included these points in the book along the storytelling, make them part of her journey.