Hug Everyone You Know – review (AD)

I was kindly given an electronic copy of Hug Everyone You Know in exchange for an honest review.*

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Hug Everyone You Know book blurb

During 2017’s National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, She Writes Press published Antoinette Truglio Martin’s touching memoir, Hug Everyone You Know: A Year of Community, Courage, and Cancer. It is a 2017 USA Best Book Awards Finalist in Non-Fiction: Narrative and a 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Finalist: Non-Fiction Women’s Issues.

In 2007, Martin believed her call back doctor appointment was routine, maybe a scare, nothing worse. Her shock at receiving a Stage I breast cancer diagnosis was instantly compounded by her own deep fears. As a self-described wimp—afraid of needles and uncomfortable with sedation—how was she going to get through this?

Antoinette started her fight against cancer with words. She began by journaling and by writing emails to Her Everyone—the large close-knit family and circle of beloved friends wanting to offer their support, especially those who were fighting breast cancer alongside her. The emails not only helped to keep Her Everyone informed, they gave cancer less of a presence in Antoinette’s life, since she wasn’t repeatedly updating people or saying the word “cancer” over and over. The practice of writing calmed her and also gave her space to focus on living: on the house that wasn’t selling, an exciting new job, daughters in college, and summer beach plans. She signed every email with the reminder to “hug everyone you know.”

Those emails and journal entries are at the heart of this memoir, which gives the book an immediacy and raw power.

Hug Everyone You Know is a memoir about how Antoinette found the courage to navigate her first year of breast cancer treatment. It’s the story of how a community—colleagues, family, friends—rallied to support her. The book is moving, brave, informative, and occasionally funny—and it speaks to us all.

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My overall thoughts on Hug Everyone You Know

I really enjoyed this book and devoured it in two afternoons. Antoinette takes us on her cancer journey told via email conversations as well as usual prose.

It’s a real and raw heartfelt memoir.

It reminds us to never lose sight of the importance of family, friends, community, kindness and compassion.

She tells it with warmth, honesty, and humour.

I think cancer can be a really lonely journey for some people but for Antoinette it was an experience of strength that she has faced together with her husband, her daughters and her everyone and that really comes across throughout the book.

Through the email correspondence she has with her everyone you see the endurance of the human spirit (so many of her loved ones have battled cancer themselves) as well as the importance of love and community and the need for hope each and every day of the journey.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and wish her the very best of health and happiness.

Hug Everyone You Know is now available to purchase on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and  IndieBound.

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About the author

Antoinette Truglio Martin is a life-long Long Islander, teacher, wife, mother, daughter, and friend. She is the author of Hug Everyone You Know: A Year of Community, Courage, and Cancer—a memoir chronicling her first year battling breast cancer as a wimpy patient.

Personal experience essays and excerpts of her memoir were published in Bridges, Visible Ink, and The Southampton Review. Martin proudly received her MFA in creative writing and literature from Stony Brook/Southampton University in 2016.

Antoinette had also written the children’s picture book, Famous Seaweed Soup (Albert Whitman and Company), and was a regular columnist for local periodicals Parent Connections (In a Family Way) and Fire Island Tide (Beach Bumming).

Her blog, Stories Served Around The Table, tells family tales and life’s musings. She lives in her hometown of Sayville, New York with her husband, Matt, and is never far from her “Everyone” and the beaches she loves. Since being diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2012, she strives to not let cancer to dictate her life.

Follow her at Facebook and her website.

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*Disclaimer

This review has been written with 100% honesty.

I was not financially compensated for this post. I was given an electronic copy of this book for review purposes. The opinions expressed in this post are completely my own based on my own experience.

If you would like your company/service featured on rachaelstray.com either in the form of review, sponsored post or an advertising slot, please feel free to contact me at rachaelstray@gmail.com

Please visit my contact/work with me page for more information.

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