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    Dancing on Broken Glass
    Dancing on Broken Glass
    Dancing on Broken Glass
    Audiobook13 hours

    Dancing on Broken Glass

    Written by Ka Hancock

    Narrated by Amy Landon and Zach Villa

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Lucy Houston and Mickey Chandler probably shouldn't have fallen in love, let alone gotten married. They're both plagued with faulty genes-he has bipolar disorder and she has a ravaging family history of breast cancer. But when their paths cross on the night of Lucy's twenty-first birthday, sparks fly, and there's no denying their chemistry.

    Cautious every step of the way, they are determined to make their relationship work-and they put it all in writing. Mickey promises to take his medication. Lucy promises not to blame him for what is beyond his control. He promises honesty. She promises patience. Like any marriage, they have good days and bad days-and some very bad days. In dealing with their unique challenges, they make the heartbreaking decision not to have children. But when Lucy shows up for a routine physical just shy of their eleventh anniversary, she gets an impossible surprise that changes everything. Everything. Suddenly, all their rules are thrown out the window, and the two of them must redefine what love really is.

    An unvarnished portrait of a marriage that is both ordinary and extraordinary, Dancing on Broken Glass takes listeners on an unforgettable journey of the heart.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJan 31, 2014
    ISBN9781452688565

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    Reviews for Dancing on Broken Glass

    4/5

    44 ratings6 reviews

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    • 5/5
      One of my favorite books of all time. This book quickly climbed onto that list. The remarkable love story of 2 people suffering from different things just trying to make their love work. The selflessness and emotion you feel is encapsulating. I am not a love story book kinda person but this book.... this book is so much more than just a love story. You fall in love with the characters, almost all of them. I LOVE this book.
    • 5/5
      Loved the book, the characters, the town. Lucy and Mickey meet, get married, and deal with what life has given them -- he is bipolar and has serious episodes requiring hospitalization, and her family has a strong history of cancer. The most important things in the story are how amazingly Lucy and Mickey love each other despite obstacles and what close family relationships they have. They also live in an amazing neighborhood, surrounded by people who've known Lucy a lifetime and embrace Mickey as though he's always been there, too. They're warm people who show their caring in many ways that really count.

      Without giving away the story, something profound changes everything for the couple and everyone who loves them. There are many difficult times, lots of family history, some of it unknown. The book is full of remarkable details regarding bipolar disorder and cancer. There are other remarkable details about people and how they handle things, both good and bad. Humans being humans in all the array of ways we all do that.

      I have one thing to say as an aside that pertains to many, many books. Why do authors always have a character (at least one) with green eyes and rarely mention the color of anyone else's eyes? I have green eyes and find that pretentious. Is there something special about green eyes? Really. What does that add to a story? If a male writes the book, it's usually a beautiful woman with green eyes. In this case, it's 3 sisters. None of my sisters have green eyes or the exact same coloring, so it would be unusual in a family for three with different coloring to have green eyes. Come on authors, green eyes are overdone in nearly every book I read these days.
    • 5/5
      From my blogThis is a stunning portrait when love concurs all. A marriage with the husband being bipolar and the wife having cancer, what doesn't break them makes them stronger. This is an inspiring book about generations, family, heartache, mental health, death, siblings living with cancer or survivors and love, all wrapped up in a beautiful emotional story, tissues will be needed.Do you believe in love at first sight? From the day Lucy and Mike meet, all fun and games at her 21st birthday, the love begins. Mike fights it because he doesn't believe he deserves or can be in a 'normal' relationship. Even when he is honest with Lucy she doesn't run away. This was such a great read to understand how bipolar disorder can affect so many. They marry and create their own non-negotiable contract, well when this gets broken, is it a miracle or more torture to complicate life further. Lucy and Mike may be damaged but their love truly concur all, living without each other would not be worth living for.There are so many beautiful scenes of love and family it makes you realize you have to cherish all moments. They live in a small town where everyone knows each other, traditions that are celebrated locally and become part of life that is looked forward to.There is a character no one likes to acknowledge and that is Death. Lucy's father taught her "It's not the end... And it doesn't hurt. And finally, if you're not afraid of death.... you can watch for it and be ready." Sometimes the words of parents stay with us forever and this memory comforted Lucy.Many chapters begin with Mike's perspective, how the bipolar disorder will affect all decisions, sometimes about the episodes he has, the hospital visits, his fear, etc, this was a special affect executed perfectly for the reader to feel his torture.The sisterly bound captured your attention on the genuine heartbreak and responses to each others decisions in life, at times life or death decisions. How they relate to each other and respond to Mickey as an in law is touching and heartbreaking. Each play an important role, great to have strong female characters but with the feminine touch.Beautifully written characters with a solid emotional storyline. Very comforting and powerful book.I highly recommend this book. A perfect book club read and those that loved The Fault in Our Stars will enjoy this one.
    • 3/5
      I was drawn to this book because it dealt with the problems of maintaining a healthy marriage when one partner has bipolar disorder. I have a dear friend whose daughter is bipolar and who is contemplating marrying another bipolar. I thought reading this book might help me better understand the issues involved in such a potentially explosive relationship. I’m pleased to say that this book succeeded on that front. From what I know about this disorder (and I have a great deal of academic and personal experience with it), I feel the author did a very good job imaging the dynamics of a successful bipolar marriage.Overall, I liked the book. It was a good story and that is what I needed. I chose it to help me get through a long airplane ride across eleven time zones, and it worked well for that purpose. It held my attention and kept me entertained despite continual interruptions. Yes, it is a tearjerker…but I have to say that even I, a dyed-in-the-wool highbrow literature lover, enjoy that genre once in a while.Basically, it is a story where almost all the action and dialog deals with relationships. You intimately get to know the two main characters, Lucy and Mickey. Mickey is the one with the mood disorder. But the book also focuses just as keenly on the very close relationships between Lucy and her two sisters. Add onto this the overwhelmingly supporting, and special relationships that both Lucy and Mickey have with their doctors, neighbors, and friends in the community, and you get a little village of ideal loving humanity…and that gets to the heart of this book. The (fictional) township of Brinley, Connecticut, becomes a significant character in this novel. Unfortunately, Brinley, as imagined by this author in this book, is all too rosy, and unrealistic—I just can’t believe that any small suburban community in America could be that perfect. In the middle of the book, Lucy looks down one of the main streets in Brinley “that could be a Thomas Kinkade painting” and says, “It was all the world I had ever needed—a place where kids could still play outside and moms sat visiting on the front porches keeping an eye out for them. It was a place where your lawn mysteriously got mowed or your walks got shoveled if you’d been sick or gone or just too busy.”After reading that passage, I saw the light. This book is like taking a group of very decent, honorable people--characters who are genuine, real, honestly flawed, and slightly damaged--and placing them in an overly idealistic Thomas Kinkade type of life setting. This is what I didn’t like about the book. For me, it detracted from the overall believability of the characters and the novel. I not only want my characters real, but I want their setting to be real, too.Personally, I’ve never liked Thomas Kinkade’s paintings; for me, they’re just too overly sentimental. But despite that, I did enjoyed this book. It was a good story and the author certainly has a gift for creating realistic characters. I only wish she’d placed these real people in a more realistic setting.
    • 5/5
      I loved loved loved this book. If you know someone who is Bipolar or has a mental illness, this will make you laugh, cry, and smile. Ka Hancock does an amazing job capturing the struggles of the 2 main characters. One will surprise you, the other will make you cry....
    • 5/5
      From the first sentence, I knew Dancing on Broken Glass would be an emotional read. Lucy and Mickey were destined to be together although on paper the odds were against them. Hancock created two flawed, but endearing characters that readers cannot help but to welcome into their lives.I felt as though Lucy and Mickey were two of my closest friends. Every time I closed the book, my mind would wander and think about them. I could not wait to find stolen moments throughout the day to pick up where I left off. I noticed I read faster when Mickey and Lucy were at their high points. As the book progressed, I began to slowly turn the pages out of fear and dread about what was waiting around the corner. To experience a love as deep and devoted as both Lucy and Mickey felt for one another is not to be taken lightly. Hancock beautifully wrote about the messiness of marriage. The determination to stay committed to not only your spouse, but to yourself. When it was so easy for both Lucy and Mickey to give up and walk away, Hancock demonstrated their strength to keep fighting and rewriting the script of their marriage.Dancing on Broken Glass is a book that will make you laugh, cry and remain hopeful through the dark seasons of life. Hancock is a talented author with a gift of capturing the raw and real emotions of relationships. I'm looking forward to reading more from this author. Highly recommended.