For Better or For Worse - Gone!

I received an e-mail from Amazon asking me to rate my purchases - I'm sorry, review my purchases - and I clicked on the first one, for For Better or For Worse - Just a Simple Wedding, the last book in a 30 year series. At least that long. And I began to cry.

Would you like to see my review?

"I will miss the release of new books yearly updating me on Michael, Liz and April Patterson and of course Elly and John. They have been a part of my life since Keep the Home Fries Burning and I was able to find all the books going back. While I've never wanted children I learned about all the aspects - positive and negative, easy and hard, fun and trying - about the process.

Lynn Johnston has brought love, life and dealing with it all to the rest of us with fun, charm, tears, laughter and everything in between. I loved this book but it breaks my heart that it is the last one. But I have the whole collection to read anytime and I will reread all of them the rest of my days.

Thank you, Lynn. You have made the world a much more magic place."

If you have never read the comics or don't like them, well, don't read it. But you'll be missing out. Lynn Johnston took us through life with Michael and Liz when they were little kids - Michael, age four and Lizzie, age two. In this book they are in their 30s. Michael is a successful author, married his grade school sweetheart Deanna whom he found again in college, and has two small children, Meredith and Robin. Liz is marrying her high school boyfriend Anthony who has been married to a very wretched woman and had a wonderful daughter with her of whom he has custody.

And Elly and John had April when Michael was in high school. I think Liz may have been in high school as well. I may not recall that incorrectly, but they were nearly adults or they were just adults. April was born on 1 April 1991.

These people - and they are people - have been a part of my life since 1985 (the first book I got was actually The Last Straw the year before Keep the Home Fries Burning. They have been great friends, as all book characters have in a series that one loves and reads over and over. I have a few families - Menolly from the Dragonsong series; Belgarion from The Belgariad and Malloreon series (David Eddings, bless him, writes trilogies with five books - you gotta love that man); Victoria Austin, in a multitude of Madeliene L'Engle's books, and others.

And I miss the Pattersons already.