32 Days in May

3.5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review

Right now, he sees me the way I want to be seen: healthy.

32 Days in May was a story of finding yourself after getting a chronic diagnosis and what that can all mean when falling in love. Nadia lived in New York and had a high paying job in advertising when she starts to feel bone deep tired, losing control of her body leads to losing her job. After getting diagnosed with Lupus, she moves into her family's small duplex beach house in her hometown. Her dad is calling people trying to get her a job, her older sister is constantly pressuring her to “get out” and live, and her doctor just set her up with his cousin, Marco, who just so happens to be a former tv star who hasn't really been heard from in years after getting arrested in an airport with party drugs. It's when Marco suggests no strings attached dating for only the month of May, that Nadia begins to realize that even if her life doesn't look the same, it can still be worth living.

He looks at me and sees another sorta-cute local girl armed with a self-fashioned tristate, tough-girl attitude that he knows all too well, well enough to kick right through. But he has no idea what he's up against. Deep in the crevices of my mind, my own chaos demon rattles her chains.

This was all told from Nadia's point-of-view and she has one of those warped, some gallows, sense of humor, I got her and found her funny but I can see her personality not working for everyone. Luckily, it worked really well with Marco's, he loved how she didn't give him the “star treatment” and how it helped him to get out of his head. Marco's was the lost for her but trying to hide it so he doesn't scare her away, who wants to really make a go of things beyond the month and it's Nadia who has to work through her emotional issues. Along with her health issues and the emotional journey she goes on to learn to live with them, there's also discussion of her suicidal thoughts for trigger warnings (it's lightly touched on one or two times until towards the ending of the book where we see her in that suicidal moment). This was more of Nadia's story and while we get some talk about Marco's addiction issues, it isn't until something like the last five pages we get fuller details about his past life. Since it came so late, it felt awkward to me and I actually could have did without them because by that time, it didn't really flush out his character more to me.

Maybe that's what being alive is. You don't get to surface, new. You break away; you start again; you molt old skin, altogether too tight and wrong, and while scars fade, they never disappear. At least not right away.

Along with the romance, which I thought worked as Nadia and Marco played off each other well, but still think this was more of Nadia's journey, we get a look at the complicated sisterly relationship. I'm sure many will relate to the highs of giggling together with the person that gets you and the lows of that same person knowing you so well they know the exact correct buttons to push to anger and devastate you. There was also Nadia's neighbors who brought different perspectives to her life to help round out her character.

I've met a man who takes my picture.

You'll probably want Nadia to tell Marco about her sickness before the latter second half moment she does but the author also did a good job making her understandable to be seen a certain way. This was sweet, funny, emotional, and with an open door scene, sexy. Nadia's walls were fortified with sarcasm, teasing flirting, and vulnerability but Marco had the compatibility tools to finally break through, while also sharing parts of himself to have Nadia also falling in love.