Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Other Four-Letter Words

I watched the movie first and cried at the end. This book has been amazing. Michael’s story telling is amazing and so heartfelt. Love…love…love this book!!!

I have followed Michael Ausiello’s work for years; he always had the best “Bones” and “Gilmore Girls” scoop. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel reading about his personal life though, so this book sat in my digital “want to read” pile for a while. With the buildup of press for the movie, I finally decided to dive in, and I’m so glad I did. This memoir had more heart than nearly any one I’ve ever read, and it was written in such a way that I felt like I was there with Mike and Kit on any given day. The cancer journey they went on - while unique to them - is unfortunately a relatable one, and by the end, I felt as if I had lost my friend too. Throughout the span of 300+ pages, I laughed, I cried, I hoped, I feared, and, by the end, I thoroughly wished it wasn’t a memoir, but instead a work of fiction. If this has been in your “to be read” pile, start it today. You won’t want to put it down. I am looking forward to seeing the movie soon.

A heartbreaking, beautiful, life-affirming love letter to his husband. I hope we all can experience a love like the love that Mike shows for Kit.

This book is incredible with its humor, it's wit, and plot that feels relatable at times. I have followed Michael Ausiello's spoiler articles since I was a teenager so I loved the tv references but I feel so !such sympathy for him and Kit as I read what was going on behind the scenes. I found this inspiring to my own life as a gay man in a serious relationship with someone whom I could never Imagine having the courage to face such tragedy in the say that Ausiello does. Thank you for sharing this part of your life with us. I don't read many autobiographies but I will definitely visit this book again in the future. Now its time for a good cry. RIP Kit.

One of the things I love 💕 about a magnificent book is being in the story. I was hugely aware that I as the reader was the fly on the wall but I loved being that fly!!!! Michael invited me to his love story with enormous honesty, dignity and truth.I miss Kit too & would so love to give you a hug Michael! I've been married a very long time & have no idea how I will cope when my husband passes away.Thank you for letting me have the privilege of reading about you both 💝

Read it in one day. I purchased & watched the movie more than once. Then I bought the book. Bittersweet reading even though I knew the ending. The title of course tells you the ending. Many of the experiences that Michael shared with Kit's diagnosis, treatments & tragic ending brought me to tears reminiscing about my husband's struggle with a brain tumor. The inability to communicate, confusion, restlessness reminded me of my husband's last days. A beautifully written memoir of a love story.I felt I was going thru their journey with them - every step of the way. OLIVE this book. Felt I knew them thru the beautifully written memoir

There are so many similarities between Mike and Kit’s relationship to that with my own husband. I see so much of myself in Kit - “a butterfly!” Or in my husband’s description of me “squirrel!!” And I see much of my husband in Mike.I’ve been through my own health issues in the past few years, which have included brain surgery, much time out of work, pain management, and more. I don’t think I fully appreciated what that put my husband through until reading this book. My battle was no where near Kit’s, but I realize more now that it was our battle, not just my own.Michael also writes specifically, and with great candor about the hospice experience. Having lost my mother in law and father, both within a year, both in hospice, so much rang true. From the medications, to the death rattle, to the idea that the dying often choose to go when alone (as happened with my MIL, despite us sitting round the clock - she chose to go in the 5 minutes she’d been left alone for the last two weeks), all of it was written in excruciating, and heartfelt detail. Thank you for deftly and openly sharing this experience. You’ve allowed me to heal just a bit more, and maybe gain some closure I was needing.

Like many memoirs about death and dying, Michael Ausiello's "Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies", is a combination of personal and societal remembrances. Some of the personal memories in Ausiello's book are raw and gritty, while the societal ones are more general. How to help a loved one through treatment in today's world of cancer medicine. And how to help that loved one to as good a death as possible.Michael Ausiello's book is the story of his life with Christopher ("Kit") Cowan and Kit's death at the age of 42 from a rare form of colorectal cancer. Michael takes the reader through his meeting Kit and their thirteen years together. The two married when Kit was diagnosed with cancer, roughly a year before his death. Their relationship was very much the work-in-progress most of our relationships are, straight or gay, and Michael Ausiello seems to be as honest as he can be of the ups and downs of any marital relationship. But Kit's world was not only his husband Michael. An only child, he was very close to his parents, and he was extremely well-respected in the New York design world.I thought that Ausiello's book was very well written but also a bit too long. An editor might have taken a few pages, a few scenes, a few reminisces out and the story would have been complete. I did like the last part, which looked at a possible future for the two if Kit had lived.

I so enjoyed this true love story and the journey they took together until the end.. I also watched the movie that was very true to the facts… We all should have a love relationship like this in our lives right until the end….

I loved this book! Full of emotions.

Very honest account of what a relationship is. Sad and funny at different times. You can't miss it. Greetings from Mexico

Charting the course of an entire relationship, from its fairytale highs to its lowest ebbs, this is a searingly honest, profoundly moving, deeply sad and yet at times hugely funny account of love not only surviving, but thriving against the odds. At times it is easy to forget that this is a memoir, not a work of fiction, and that its two 'leads' are (or in the case of the eponymous hero were) real people, but that is testament to author Michael Ausiello's skill as a storyteller - one who has a strong sense of narrative and what works on the page to draw the reader in.Ausiello is never manipulative, however: being this open about his life and the 13 years he spent with his partner (latterly husband) Kit before his untimely death makes that impossible. While crafting the story cleverly, he never shies away from telling it like it is, giving events an undeniable raw edge that is both challenging and gratifying. That he does so with his heart on his sleeve, never trading on mawkishness, but giving us everything, warts and all, is to his credit. And also what makes it so sad and so life-affirming simultaneously.This is only the second book in my life I've read with tears in my eyes, and not just because I identify so much with the author (having lost a loved one to cancer myself, and also being a gay man of the same age in a similar relationship and with similar hang-ups). It simply touches the heart, and I defy any reader not to be affected by it. From its quieter domestic moments to its more confrontational scenes, through to its heartbreaking but beautiful and unexpectedly hopeful final chapters in the wake of Kit's death and flash-forward coda of a life never lived, it is as transformative an experience for the reader as it clearly was for those involved.

Obwohl ich ihm schon zu der entsprechenden Zeit auf Twitter folgte, war mir das Drama in Michael Ausiello's Leben irgendwie durch die Lappen gegangen. Erst als er sein Buch vor kurzem veröffentlichte, bekam ich Wind davon.Und was soll ich sagen...Michael war schon immer einer meiner Lieblings-TV-Journalisten, aber beim Lesen dieses Buches stieg mein Respekt für diesen Mann um gefühlte 200%. Ich habe abwechselnd gelacht und geweint, ergriffen von der nackten Ehrlichkeit, mit der Michael seine Beziehung, die guten sowie die schlechten Momente, beschreibt. Die Leidenschaft, mit der dieses Paar alles dafür gab, die Beziehung am Leben zu halten. Und dann macht das Schicksal dem Ganzen einen Strich durch die Rechnung.Michael nimmt kein Blatt vor den Mund. Knallhart beschreibt er die Unprofessionalität der Ärzte und des medizinischen Personals.Den Tod von Kit beim Lesen hautnah mitzuerleben hat mir eine kalte Gänsehaut bereitet.Dieses Buch ist jeden Cent wert.