An autobiography written by a young woman suffering with terminal cancer. It is about understanding, accepting, learning and teaching how to both enjoy life and face death. I was deeply moved by the courage of this young author and recommend this book.

A powerful and devastating book--unrelenting in the way that memoirs of trauma can be, a force of a story and life.

This is a beautifully written memoir from a woman living with and dying from cancer. I love her honesty about her treatments and her reactions to what's happening to her and her family. I love her honesty about the worry she has of her husband and daughters moving on without her. This is an amazing book about love and life.

This is a beautiful title that has been very popular in our library system. Humorous, honest, an immigrant story, an illness story, and much more.

This was an emotional read. As you experience the author’s diagnosis of colon cancer, the journey that follows, and her history of being born with infant cataracts — which left her blind. The author’s raw and honest expressions as she dealt with her imminent death. Her husband, Josh’s note at the end was nothing short of heart wrenching.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for my advanced review copy. All opinions and thoughts are my own.

This book was well written and engaging but the subject matter was so upsetting that I could not finish it.

I really really wanted to love this book. I tried to keep reading it but I felt like as she continued in treatment I was getting more deep in the story and downtrodden. I did not finish the book.

This was a very moving book for me. Having lost two dear friends to cancer, this was especially poignant. The author was an exceptional writer, particularly in light of what she was living through as she wrote. Obviously a very sad book, but also an insight into how someone who should have been worrying about her children and husband and what they want for dinner, was instead having heart wrenching thoughts about their lives when she was gone. Any one who reads this work of art will be thinking about for a long time. Strongly recommend.

This is a beatiful book written by a mother who is blind and dying to her daughters. It is a memoir about finding strength and beauty even in the hardest of times. It is about living life to its fullest despite hardship and disability. It is beautiful and heartwrenching. I think everyone should read this.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

The Unwinding of a Miracle is a very open review of the author's life, both prior to her cancer diagnosis and the time after. To anyone given such a diagnosis, kudos to you for withstanding the devastating blow and pulling yourself together to fight for your life while trying to live it the best you can!

Julie Yip-Williams received her diagnosis of stage-4 colon cancer while in her mid-30's with two young children. Putting pen to paper to tell her story not only gave her a place to document what she was going through, it seemed to help her process her memories of the past, find perspective in her present, process hope, anger, despair, and vow to make the most of the life she had left.

I applaud Yip-Williams for her courage, her honesty and her drive to have the best life she could given the circumstances. At the same time, though I feel rather guilty saying so (I am not a mean person and absolutely mean no disrespect to the author), I never really connected with her on a personal level. The book was all over the place timewise, jumping back and forth between past, present and future at random. There was also much repetition of things already covered; minute exhausting details about every treatment and the search for every option; clichés galore; and just an overall lack of cohesiveness. These added up to making the book hard for me to want to finish.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House for allowing me to read a copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review.

Life was incredibly cruel to Julie Yip-Williams. She was born blind in Vietnam, where her grandmother advised her parents to have her euthanized rather than go through life without vision or medical care to restore her sight. But her family escaped Vietnam on a sinking ship to the U.S., where she had surgery to restore much of her vision and went on to get an education, become a lawyer, and start a family. And then, as a young mother of two, she was diagnosed with terminal colorectal cancer.

This memoir is incredibly brave, honest, and personal. It tells Yip-Williams' story and explores her years looking death in the face. I can't imagine taking on such a project while going on such a painful and difficult journey. Her contemplations on death, life, spirituality, and fate are so powerful. I'm so grateful that she was willing to leave her legacy in this way.

Beautiful, heartbreaking, intimate and honest. It was an immense privilege to read these words written by Julie to her dear family and friends. Quite similar to When Breath Becomes Air, it will break your heart into a hundred pieces but leave you wanting to spread kindness and gratitude into the world.

"Live while you live, my friends."

Thank you, Random House and NetGalley, for this digital ARC.

The first thing I'd mention is that this isn't a book to read while your friend is dying of cancer. The overlay of the authors story with my daily reality was a little raw. The interweaves the reality of living through and with cancer into a larger narrative of the authors life and history, bringing a complicated past into a discussion of resiliency. I appreciated the honesty in the writing. I found some of the timeline jumping difficult to follow. An interesting look at how we live when death is right beside us.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Random House, and the author's family for the opportunity to read and review this book. 4.5 stars.

In her late 30s, Julie Yip-Williams, was diagnosed with Stage IV colorectal cancer. She was a successful attorney, happily married with two small children. But this wasn't the first time Julie had faced death. She was born in Vietnam to Chinese parents at a time of civil unrest. She was born blind with severe cataracts and her grandmother forced her parents to take her to a herb doctor who would put her in an eternal sleep so she would not be a burden to her family. Surviving that as well as an escape on a refugee boat would have seemed to use up her share of bad luck.

This book is Julie's diary of her diagnosis, treatment and acceptance of her death. She railed at the cultural view of cancer of it being a war and if you fight hard enough you can win it, as well as the sometimes cheerful denial of those facing death. Julie was angry and while she fought very hard to stay in this life for her family, she was also very much a realist.

This is definitely a book that urges everyone to live life while you have it and to live it fully. But also to embrace the eventual unwinding of the miracle that is life.

In the vein of Until I Say Goodbye: A Book about Living, When Breath Becomes Air, and The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying, The Unwinding of the Miracle is a memoir about death and dying but that is ultimately, triumphantly, about life and living.

I have lived even as I am dying, and therein lies a certain beauty and wonder. As it turned out, I have spent these years unwinding the miracle that has been my life, but on my terms.


Julie Yip-Williams was in her mid thirties when she was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. The diagnosis came out of nowhere: Julie was healthy and in the best shape of her life. What started out as a stomach ache or bout with flu abruptly resulted in a life-changing declaration: you have cancer. Julie is devastated, not only that she might die at a tragically young age, but at the thought that she might leave her two young daughters to grow into womanhood without a mother and leave her husband without a wife and partner.

Julie is also resilient. She remembers her early life and muses that she should never have survived childhood. Born with cataracts in Communist Vietnam, Julie’s grandmother urged Julie’s parents to take baby Julie to a herbalist to obtain something to make the baby go to sleep and never wake up. It was better to be dead than to live with blindness. Grandmother feared that should Julie live, she would become a shameful burden to her family. Miraculously, Julie lived, and not long thereafter immigrated to American with her family, where she eventually received medical attention, but far too late, and as a result is legally blind.

Julie’s life story is incredible. Her blindness caused her to feel anger at times, of course, but she ultimately prevailed. The rage at the unfairness of it all drove her toward success. She traveled the world, graduated from Harvard Law School, practiced law at a firm in New York City, married the love of her life, and raised two beautiful daughters.

The cancer diagnosis changed everything for Julie. She asks her readers how it is possible to survive almost being killed by her family as a baby, only to be diagnosed with cancer thirty years later? She confronts her anger and depression and is able to embrace a positive attitude, but remains skeptical of “hope,” and the crushing sadness never truly leaves. This book is raw and personal; it is literally Julie’s diary entries and blog posts. As a writer, she is absolutely honest – not overly cheery or optimistic, Julie has a positive outlook some days, but is overwhelmed by depression on other days. She takes us to the doctor, to chemo, and to her daughters’ school events. It’s jarring to read the sections recounting her medical experience with the passages chronicling the mundane details of daily life. The juxtaposition of these passages is shocking.

I recommend this book to everyone, not just to those with cancer or those who have a close family member with cancer. I’ve read quite a few books about being diagnosed with and living with cancer, but The Unwinding of the Miracle is undoubtedly one of the best I have read (if you enjoy this book, I recommend reading Memoir of a Debulked Woman: Enduring Ovarian Cancer next). Julie’s honestly is heartbreaking. It undid me: at times her writing is so raw and personal that it felt like an invasion of privacy to read. She captures the wide range of sometimes contradictory emotions that accompany a cancer diagnosis, and the challenges of retaining an identity as a mother and wife after receiving the new identity of a cancer patient. I tore through this book in only a few sittings, and by the end I was sobbing. This is the kind of book that can change your life. I really mean that. This is so much more than a book about cancer. It’s a book about love, family, motherhood, hope, and living with joy.

And for any who might be reading this: I am grateful to have had you here, on this journey. I would presume to encourage you to to relish your time, to not be disabled by trials or numbed by routine, to say yes as much as you can, and to mock the probabilities. Luxuriate in your sons and daughters, husbands and wives. And live, friends. Just live. Travel. Get some stamps in those passports.


My only criticism (and I’m not even deducting a star; this book is THAT good) is that a little more editing is needed. Some of Julie’s stories were told over and over again (especially the stories from her early childhood), and the book could do without all that repetition. There was also an entire chapter about Roger Federer that seemed completely out of place and should probably be taken out of the book entirely. These problems are completely fixable, and I hope the manuscript is edited down a bit before being published later this year. After all, I did only read a review copy. I realize that this book is the product of Julie’s diary entries, which are intensely personal. Julie was writing for herself, and I can imagine the comfort she would feel writing about her childhood, her parents, and her daughters. These passages are invaluable, but they can weigh the reader down.

Julie died in April 2018, about a year before the book will be published. She was 42. Obviously, I never met Julie, but her words have touched me and brought me great comfort, and I wish I could tell her husband and her daughters how much her words meant to me.

Julie’s husband says it best in the Epilogue:

But that – cancer kills – is hardly a revelation. The revelation would come in how Julie responded to her fate. For the little girl born blind, she saw more clearly than any of us. In facing the hard truth of her inevitability, and never averting her gaze or seeking refuge in fantasy, she turned her life into a lesson for us all in how to live fully, vividly, honestly.

…

In our life together I learned so many lessons from her, but none more so than this: it is in the acceptance of truth that real wisdom and peace come. It is in the acceptance of truth that real living begins. Conversely, avoidance of truth is the denial of life.

Julie was a friend of a friend; I never met her.

This is dark and intense. I had to read it in little chunks, so I wouldn’t get overwhelmed. I especially liked her attacks on what she called the “hope industrial complex.” I so admire her honesty, even when it gets dark and brutal. She must have been really amazing.

This book truly touched my heart. Julie tells her story with truth and candor about her battle with cancer and how it affects her entire family. She does this by writing letters in which she tells about her highs and lows, both physically and most importantly emotionally. At times I found it a bit detailed and repetitive when she wrote about her young life in Vietnam and relationship with grandmother. I felt there were times when she spoke of college, and other instances more that once. I found myself skimming through those parts, especially near the end. Josh’s epilogue was a bonus. Grief is different for all of us. He stepped out of his “comfort zone” to finish this book for her. All in all she has left a book that her daughters will hopefully treasure when they are old enough to appreciate her bluntness and candor on her battle to prepare them for life after her passing

Thank you to the publisher for gifting me a digital ARC of this title via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review

I feel honored that Julie Yip-Williams allowed us to be a part of her journey with cancer and remembering her past. It took a lot of bravery to share something so personal and to be so open and honest throughout it all. I so appreciated her honest and open outlook that wasn't sugar-coated or "made pretty" for social media. She shared with us the ups and downs, the positive and the negative in her feelings, relationships, experiences. It was interesting to learn of her past and to see how all of the things she endured and experienced led her to becoming the woman, wife, and mother that she was. I loved her outlook on seeing her experiences in life as miracles and finding the blessings and joys in each, even when they were very difficult and painful at the time. She does not have a belief in God, yet she does believe in some supreme power and an after-life and it was apparent to me that those beliefs strengthened her experiences and thoughts. I admired her honest, practical, and thoughtful approach to preparing herself and her family for her early death. She was definitely someone to admire and to learn from, not just in how to face disease and death, but more importantly in how to face and appreciate life every day. It is not something to be taken for granted. Thank you to her family for sharing Julie with us for all that we can learn and benefit from her. and their very personal experience.

When Julie Yip-Williams was diagnosed with colon cancer when she was 37 years old, she decided to write her amazing story. This resulted in this outstanding book that records her journey to the U.S. and her final five years. Born blind in Vietnam, she escaped euthanasia at the hands of her grandmother. Her family moved to Hong Kong and finally made their way to California. This book is as awesome and magnificent as the life it records. It instructs, it inspires. It is fascinating, comforting and shattering. It is an extraordinary guide to living life to the fullest by consciously facing hard truths. This is a very humbling and inspiring read. An advance reader copy was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

Heartbreaking doesn't begin to describe the emotional territory navigated in this memoir of the life, illness and death of a vibrant young mother stricken with metastatic colon cancer at the age of 37. The miracle of the title refers to the author's survival and good fortune against all odds, as a baby born blind in Vietnam in the late 1970s, a country impoverished and in disarray. Escape to America, topnotch medical attention, and an Ivy League education furthered her miraculous life trajectory. A high-power legal career, love and motherhood completed the perfect picture. But too soon the unwinding began.

How can an intense, take-charge person deal with the loss of control imposed by incurable illness? How might a philosophical, articulate woman ponder the possibility of dying? How should a "tiger mom" prepare her young daughters for a future that most likely will not include her? Julie Yip-Williams became a blogger. Her blog evolved into a book that brings her vividly and lastingly to life. In it she recounts, with unflinching honesty and in great detail, the course of her illness. As she faced each challenge, I found myself examining my own life, my strengths and weaknesses, and my own beliefs about life and death.

A well-written and extraordinarily moving memoir by a talented and courageous writer, this is a book and an individual I know I won't forget.  Highly recommended.