Book Review #4 -Never Change

Never Change by Elizabeth Berg has a nice, friendly feel to it. The book is a quick read and while it deals with death and dying it is rather a soft book, easy to read and pleasant. I can say this book was enjoyable to a certain level but a bit on the unbelievable side. The shy and aloof main character, Myra, is a nurse and ends up providing palliative care to Chip, (who, of course, was the coolest boy in her high school), when he returns to his hometown to live out his days with a brain tumor. This already had a Nicholas Sparks contrivance to it, but then Chip ends up living at Myra's house when he finds his parents are just a little too much to be around 24/7. Hello?! Medical ethics? I've never heard of any nurse inviting her patient to stay in her house. This and other things make the plot rather silly, rendering it mostly fluff. There are some nice passages here and there, this is one of them:

I think I know what Diann's yearbook looks like - no room for any more messages, all the space filled by people congratulating her on being herself and congratulating themselves on being her friend, and telling her to "never change." As though it were a choice. As though one of greatest lessons isn't that change is the only constant. The seasons tell us, everything in organic life tells us, that there is no holding on; still, we try to do just that. Sometimes, though, we learn the kind of wisdom that celebrates the open hand. Then we know that letting go of everything is the only way to keep the things that matter most.