Breastless in the City: A Young Woman's Story of Love, Loss, and Breast Cancer »

Cathy Bueti has been an occupational therapist for more than 15 years. She is active in the young adult cancer community, and has been a panel participant at various cancer conferences as well as keynote speaker for such events as Sloan-Kettering’s Survivorship Day. She has been featured on CNN, Lifetime TV.com, USA Today, and Woman’s World.  Cathy lives in Brewster, New York, with her husband and their pug. She continues to inspire people on her website and blog at cathybueti.com

When it comes to dating, Carrie Bradshaw has nothing on Cathy Bueti .

At 25, just a few weeks before her second wedding anniversary, Cathy’s high school sweetheart died in a tragic car accident. She wasn’t sure how she would go on living.  At the time, she was certain it was her last chance at love.

A few years later, just as Cathy took her first tentative steps into New York City’s dating world, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. For most, a cancer diagnosis would put dating on the back burner. But Cathy refused to waste a second of her life. She updated her profile and redoubled her efforts to find love while she still had her hair.

While juggling doctor’s appointments, surgery, chemotherapy, and her job, she remained in hot pursuit of true love. If she found it once, she knew she could find it again. Against the comical backdrop of one Mr. Wrong after another, Cathy was forced to come to terms with what was really keeping her from finding love.

Just a week after her last chemotherapy treatment, Cathy met someone who  would change everything. A survivor in every sense, Cathy’s honest and heartwarming journey to heal her body—and her heart—will inspire you to live every day to the fullest.

Bette-Lee Fox - Library Journal

Physical therapist Bueti was knocked for a loop when she was widowed at 25 and then a breast cancer sufferer at 31. Her story is even more complex, however. A difficult childhood with an alcoholic father and her parents' divorce led to trust and self-esteem issues that resulted in a loving but unconsummated marriage. Following the death of her husband, Paul, Bueti becomes an online dating coquette, and her book describes the many unsatisfactory relationships she encounters. Her diagnosis (following several doctors' claims that she is too young to have breast cancer-in 2001, for goodness sake) is followed by surgery and chemotherapy, but the humor that might have made this text palatable or inspirational to readers in the same situation is sorely lacking (see, e.g., Jennie Nash's The Victoria's Secret Catalog Never Stops Coming..., Jami Bernard's Breast Cancer, There & Back, and Geralyn Lucas's Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy). Additionally, the writing is merely pedestrian. We wish Bueti well with her recovery, but her book is an optional purchase for only the most comprehensive breast cancer collections.