Never Change by Elizabeth Berg ~ Book Review

Myra Lipinsky is a 51 year old visiting or home health care nurse.  She has never married and spends her days serving her patients and spending enjoyable time with her beloved dog.  She feels she's built a pretty good life all things considered.  That is until she is assigned a patient with an incurable illness.  It's not the illness that gets to Myra but the fact that the patient, Chip Reardon, just happens to be Myra's old high school crush.  Chip was the "golden boy" of high school.  Good looking, popular and on the football team, his crowd was everything Myra wasn't.  And now here he is back in her life, dying.  Not quite the second chance she would have dreamt of.  Chip has returned from Manhatten to his childhood home to live at his parents.  Though his Mom is pushing him to do whatever it takes, including invasive treatments, Chip has resolved himself to the fact that he wants to live his last days in peace without being poked and prodded with no guarantees.   As Myra cares for Chip, trying to balance his wishes with pressure from his Mom to convince Chip to undergo the treatments, Myra starts to find her role as caregiver coming closer and closer to the line she must never cross, finding her feelings for Chip grow from patient to friend and beyond.  As their relationship grows and becomes more complicated, Chip's old girlfriend from Manhattan inserts herself back into the picture.  Myra is left to deal with all sorts of emotions, questioning how she has lived her life and how she will continue to live her life when Chip is no longer there to care for.

I loved this story.  It brought out so many emotions and was so well written, drawing me in to Myra's seemingly simple world now turned very complicated.  I loved her relationship with her patients as she saw them day to day caring for the most grumpy to the most needy.  Her tender care and sensitivity with them was so nice to read, even as she fought her low self esteem.   Her relationship with Chip was complicated and interesting and there were parts of the story where just a sentence or paragraph had me talking to the book saying:  "Don't go there!  Don't you go there, I'll be so upset if that is what this story does."  I won't tell you what "there" was, or whether the story went there, but I'll just say that I was totally immersed into it.  Such a mix of emotions as the story ended.  

I gave this book  a 9.5/10