The Days I Loved You Most aims to be a weepie on the level of The Notebook. It didn’t tug my heartstrings that hard – as a matter of fact it made me wince a bit – but it’s a solid little slice of women’s fiction that points out that even the best-laid life plans don’t always go as we would like.

Evelyn and Joseph have been married for over sixty years, but that time is coming to an end. They gather together their three adult children – Violet, Jane and Thomas – and inform them that in a year’s time, they’re going to commit suicide together. Evelyn has received a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease and is already beginning to falter; Joseph refuses to live without her. Ergo, they ask their children to accept that they will live their very best year together, build memories with them, try to fulfill some bucket-list goals, and then, the following summer, will die together in their family home, in the garden they have cultivated.

As that year plays out, Evelyn and Joseph meticulously plan their exits, think back to their marriage – the time they met in 1941 as teenagers, to the hard war years, to raising their children, to the extramarital temptation Evelyn faced, and the unfulfilled dreams that soured her relationship with their daughter, Jane, who could not face her mother’s hypocrisy and ran off into the drug subculture of the 1960s, and later came back with a daughter named Rain. As summer fades into fall and fall into winter, Evelyn and Joseph must cope with second thoughts – and wonder if leaving this earth together is what they really want to do.

This is a rich saga, and when it works it works. There are lots of emotional revelations in The Days I Loved You Most, and it doesn’t skimp on the realities of death, terminal illnesses, unruly children, business stress, joy and pain. It skips from 1941 to 2002, decades of American history, and paints a realistic portrait of coastal New England.

But the book has one big problem, and that’s it’s clunky writing. Whole decades pass by, but time period-establishing lines clink to the ground. In particular, the way Jane’s hippie friends and the whole counterculture scene is portrayed is so flat, pat, and stock. This doesn’t help Evelyn – who, at her worst, comes off as selfish instead of self-directed, or Joseph, who at his worst looks like a cipher instead of a full-formed human being – seem like three-dimensional people. But at their best, they are likable, honest, thoughtful.

The Days I Loved You Most is a mixed bag. It didn’t ultimately work for me but for those interested in an unusual storyline and a lot of emotional heft, it might be a good fit.