Husband Material

Husband Material

Emily Belden

Graydon House, Dec 30, 2019

304 pages

Women’s Lit- Life Passages

Provided by NetGalley

⭐⭐⭐⭐🌙

This review will probably reveal a bit too much for most readers.

The cover is attractive but totally misleading as to the story within. What we see with this pretty blue cover and its comic pictures is a romance story, but that’s really not what this is. Yes, there is some romance, but this is a story of grieving and healing for a couple of people, but mostly for Charlotte, our main character.

Charlotte and Decker had only been married for six months when Decker died. Charlotte moved to a new place and started over. She’s a whiz with numbers and statistics, so she works for a company creating a dating app based on statistics. In fact, she’s secretly creating her own personal app, refining the numbers for herself. She’s coming closer and closer to the perfect husband for herself. One that won’t be a problem, the one she can safely marry and will never get hurt by. That’s what her life’s been about for the past five years actually. Staying safe and keeping her secret. She hasn’t told anyone that she’s a widow. That she was once married. That her husband died. Not a word to anyone. Her past life is behind her and she doesn’t share it with anyone.

Then her roommate brings up a rather heavy package one day addressed to her as Mrs. Charlotte Rosen, and it’s from the place that Decker’s cremains have been kept. When Charlotte opens the package right there in front of her roommate, out falls the urn with Decker’s cremains. Yes, husband material. Her roommate’s curious, of course, and asks questions that Charlotte’s not prepared to answer or to dodge properly. This resets Charlotte’s grieving process, reconnects her with her estranged mother-in-law and also bridges the gap when she runs into Decker’s best friend. Charlotte has to decide what to do with Decker’s cremains now. This whole process creates the opportunity for this group of people to revisit their grief and their relationships and to heal as they hadn’t originally when Decker had died and their grief was still new. Though Charlotte tries her best to stay in denial right up to the end and stay busy with her numbers and app. But healing, grief, and love win out in the end in this heartwarming story of life and loss. I know this book will get stuck in the romance section, but I just can’t see it that way. It is so much more than a romance novel. It is about loss and grief and healing. I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys novels such as this about people who survive and go on to live a full life. I would place this in women’s lit/life passages.