With It’s Okay to Laugh, Nora [McInerny] puts a young, fresh twist on the subjects of mortality and resilience. What does it actually mean to live your “one wild and precious life” to the fullest? How can a joyful marriage contain more sickness than health? How do you keep going when life kicks you in the junk? In this deeply felt and deeply funny memoir, Nora gives her readers a true gift—permission to struggle, permission to laugh, permission to tell the truth and know that everything will be okay.
My Take: Very funny, relatable and touching.

The Hot Young Widows Club isn’t just for people who have lost a spouse, but an essential tool for anyone who has gone through a major life struggle… Nora [McInerny] offers wise, heartfelt, and often humorous advice to anyone navigating a painful period in their lives… She explores how readers can educate the people around them on what to do, what to say, and how to best to lend their support…
My Take: Very funny and often right on point.

Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice is a brave and raw narrative that doesn’t pull any punches on the realities of caregiving and bereavement. If you like captivating stories, authentic inspiration, and understanding the grieving process, then you’ll find encouragement in Jenny Lisk’s touching memoir….
My Take: Poignant and insightful, it’s a must read for any parent who is or was a caregiver for their spouse and any widowed parent looking for inspiration.

In 2015 Sheryl Sandberg’s husband, Dave Goldberg, died suddenly at the age of forty-eight. Sandberg and her two young children were devastated, and she was certain that their lives would never have real joy or meaning again. Thoughtful, honest, revealing and warm, OPTION B weaves Sandberg’s experiences coping with adversity with new findings from Adam Grant and other social scientists. The book features stories of people who recovered from personal and professional hardship, including illness, injury, divorce, job loss, sexual assault and imprisonment. These people did more than recover―many of them became stronger.
My Take: I found it interesting and inspirational, particularly the research findings.

Involuntarily single. That’s the true story of where Catherine Tidd found herself just three weeks after turning thirty-one. With three children under six years old, no fix-it skills, no clue how to live life as a widow and coping with grief after the death of her spouse, Catherine couldn’t help but be a little exasperated with her dead husband for leaving her to deal with life on her own… Her honest Confessions of a Mediocre Widow is not your typical book on grief and loss of a spouse, but rather a glimpse into the heartbreaking and sometimes humorous world of a young woman who learns that overcoming grief and healing after loss is possible, and that you can find joy in an unexpected life.
My Take: Very relatable and amusing.

In her fearless memoir, The Pink Steering Wheel Chronicles, author Laura Fahrenthold presents a moving portrait of marriage, motherhood and mourning as she captains a 1993 RV sprinkling her husband’s ashes with their two young daughters and a stray dog in an epic quest for healing and understanding. Filled with insight and wit from a career in journalism, the story captures the family’s adventures and misadventures, her deeply-layered love story, and her hilarious slice-of-life dispatches where the pink steering wheel becomes her spiritual GPS.
My Take: Very relatable and amusing.

In this transcendent and infectiously wise memoir, Saturday Night Widows, Becky Aikman—a widow, too young, too modern to accept the role—forms an unlikely group with five other young widows, each seeking a way forward in a strange and disquieting world. A warm, witty, and compassionate guide on this journey, Aikman explores surprising new discoveries about how people are transformed by adversity, learning the value of new experiences, humor, and friendship…
My Take: Interesting to read about the different relationships; probably best for widowed parents who are past the early stages of grief.

After studying to become a therapist and crisis intervention counselor—even doing her master’s thesis on the stages of bereavement—Christina Rasmussen thought she understood grief. But it wasn’t until losing her husband to cancer in her early 30s that she truly grasped the depths of sorrow and pain that accompany loss… In Second Firsts, Rasmussen walks you through her Life Reentry process to help you break grief’s spiral of pain, so you can stop simply surviving and begin to live again.
My Take: Best for widowed parents who are past the early stages of grief and looking to move forward with their lives.

After years of struggling in a tumultuous marriage, writer Rebecca Woolf was finally ready to leave her husband. Two weeks after telling him she wanted a divorce, he was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. Four months later, at the age of forty-four, he died. In All of This, Woolf chronicles the months before her husband’s death—and her rebirth after he was gone. With rigorous honesty and incredible awareness, she reflects on the end of her marriage: how her husband’s illness finally gave her the space to make peace with his humanity and her own…
My Take: Different take from other memoirs due to the author’s complicated and conflicting feelings about her husband’s death; very interesting read.

Widowed Parents Unite is more than a book—it’s a lifeline. Within its pages, you’ll meet parents who’ve lost their spouses to unforeseen tragedies, from sudden accidents to relentless illnesses. Their candid stories will resonate deeply, providing both solace and actionable advice… Designed especially for the heart-rending first year after loss, Widowed Parents Unite is your beacon during the storm…
My Take: Some tips resonate more than others, but I found most of them inspirational or helpful. There are more tactical tips in the Conclusion.

The Group: Seven Widowed Fathers Reimagine Life offers a singular perspective on grief by weaving together the latest thinking on bereavement, resiliency and post-traumatic growth with the true story of seven men who were raising children on their own after the deaths of their wives.  The men connected with each almost immediately, and over the next several years forged a deep bond as their monthly meetings evolved into a forum for healing and personal reinvention that transformed them in unexpected ways…

Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss and Love: The basis of the #1 hit movie Fatherhood starring Kevin Hart, this deeply moving memoir is about the first year of the author’s life following the birth of his daughter and the death of his wife… In this memoir, Matt shares bittersweet and often humorous anecdotes of his courtship and marriage to Liz; of relying on his newborn daughter for the support that she unknowingly provided; and of the extraordinary online community of strangers who have become his friends…

It’s Not Raining Daddy, It’s Happy: Ben Brooks-Dutton’s wife – the great love of his life – was knocked down and killed by a car as he walked beside her, pushing their two-year-old son in his buggy… In the aftermath Ben searched for guidance from men in similar situations, but it appeared that young widowed fathers don’t talk… Lost, broken and afraid of the future, two months after his wife Desreen’s death, Ben started a blog with the aim of rejecting outdated conventions of grief and instead opening up about his experiences. Within months Life as a Widower had received a million hits and had started an all-too-often hushed conversation about the reality of loss and grief…

Laughter, Tears and Braids: A Father’s Journey Through Losing His Wife to Cancer: Within six months, an aggressive cancer killed Lisa Ham, a Raleigh, North Carolina mom at the young age of 39. Her husband, Bruce, was left scrambling to pick up the pieces of their life, while maneuvering the world with a broken heart. The responsibilities of being a single father to his three active daughters were overwhelming… Along his personal journey, he became his girls’ confidante, while mastering hair dryers, shopping trips, tights and braids.