This is really intelligent but quirky read based around a woman supporting her long time best friend through her final days in a hospice, it’s generally very uplifting despite the heartbreak she’s suffering and brings to life the subject of living with death. There’s a raft of brilliant characters, great food and mixed emotions. I would have liked a bit more backstory to the friendship than it covers but otherwise it’s a positive read.

I admit, I was sceptical when I started reading this book. The story of your best friend dying in a hospice that's a funny read...? And when I began it, I worried that the constant quipping would feel like hard work. Like being sat next to the office joker who just can't stop seeing the funny side of things. All. The. Time.
But, as I continued reading (because it definitely keeps you turning those pages), I couldn't put it down. And the more I read, the more I came to understand and love the main character, Ash.
And there is an inherently surreal, almost hysterical side to watching someone you love fade away and slide into an in-between world between living and death and then their last moments as they leave you forever. At that point, the jokes do stop.
But overall, Newman's book shows how humour is the companion to pain, the flip side to the despair and confusion of grief - and that humour can also reveal poignant universal truths.. It doesn't shy away from the havoc that grief unleashes but it makes it clear that it's love that underpins the humour. A warm, brilliant book about friendship, grief and cake.
Another Netgalley reviewer mentioned the similar(ish) names. I noticed this too. There's Ash and there's a Dash. There's Jude, Jonah and Jules. That's quite a lot of Js (and I say this as a J, myself...). Still giving it 5 stars though.

What a beautiful, touching book. Edi and Ash are life-long best friends. Edi has terminal ovarian cancer and the time has come for her to move into hospice. She ends up moving into one close to her friend Ash, who visits every day and is there for her as she faces the end of her life, all while managing her own messy life. I loved these women and their friendship. I laughed and cried (sometimes on the same page). This novel is a very realistic portrayal of the feelings one has when they know a loved one has a limited time to live and is by their side as they decline. But it's not all doom and gloom and grief, it also spotlights the power and beauty of female friendship.

Thank you for the advanced copy, finished over a couple of nights this book stirred a lot of emotions inside me, I want to say immediately that I have not read a book like this before.
So well written that it's beautiful in its openess and honesty.

I work in Primary Care for the NHS and have always had a connection to anything around end of life.
This book at times is heart breaking, heart wrenching and then also mends your heart if that makes sense..
I am passionate about palliative care/end of life and that it should be discussed at the earliest opportunity to allow everyone involved time and space. The author, in this book encapsulated aspects of palliative care that others have struggled with.

This is a must read - highly recommended

We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman has an endearingly irreverent narrator dealing with how messy life and grief and relationships can be. Manages to be both funny and sad and very real. My only slight issue was at the beginning I mixed up Jude and Jonah so more distinctive character names might have been better but maybe that was just me.

A book that breaks your heart, mends it, and then breaks it all over again, 'We All Want Impossible Things' is utterly gorgeous. There's honesty running through it - both in the way it deals with death, and how it deals with intricate, complicated relationships. So warm, and, surprisingly for a book about terminal illness, so life affirming. I'm not much of a hugger, but my god did I want to give almost every character a big hug. Newman captures something so weirdly specific and accurate about the palliative care environment - and enthuses everything with so much love and life that I found it impossible to put down, no matter how many tears I shed (which was quite a lot - whether from sadness or laughter, I'm still not entirely sure...!)
Having devoured this in an evening, I'm marking this as one of my must reads of 2023.