In our Facebook community, we host a monthly book club. In August we read The Widower’s Notebook by Jonathan Santlofer. Here’s my review of this book.

Book Review: The Widower’s Notebook

This book is a memoir – the author writes about his experiences grieving the sudden loss of his wife. It’s not the type of book that I would traditionally choose but our book club voted on it.

The book starts with the death of Joy and details the grieving process that Johnathon goes through. It’s hard for me to fathom the grief he is facing so I will keep my desires to punch him to myself.

The process is at times comical, at times infuriating, and at times deeply saddening. There were definitely moments where I wanted to put the book down but I’d say stick with it.

This book also has a bit of a mystery aspect to it. How did Joy die? I think this part of the book irritated me more than any other.

At random times in the story, we’d go back to this mystery but it seemed out of place most of the time. And I didn’t feel like this part of the story was ever really wrapped up.

I will say that the part of this book that bothered me most was the way that the timeline worked. The book skipped around going backward, forward, further back, further forward. The book was still easily understood but I just get annoyed when things aren’t in a logical line.

Overall, this book was very well written. It was truly heartbreaking to read about his loss and the grieving process that he endured.

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