Description: A brilliantly funny and heartwarming debut about a young woman who stumbles,then fights to build a new life after the death of her husband.Lolly Winston has written an astonishing first novel. In Good Grief she takes a sad situation and artfully finds the humor and pathos to make readers smile and break their hearts at the same time.

Verdict: The saying, "don't judge a book by its cover" does not apply here. I was shopping one day for Mary Higgins Clark's newest and next to it was 'Good Grief' (bravo to the Barnes & Noble people for placing this book center and front). The cover appealed to me and I picked it up and started reading it in the bookstore and started laughing. The rest is history especially as it then arrived at the office for us lucky interns to be able to review! Excellent read and I was sorry this book ended as I fell in love with the characters one by one! The only real issue I had with this book was the author's tying up things very neatly with a shallow, sappy ending of sorts. Not that I wasn't cheering for the character(s) to find happiness, but given the wonderful level of the author's writing talent, and her ability to develop characters, coming up with essentially sit-com resolutions wasn't really necessary to make the story work. That's the only way this novel fails in what is otherwise a wonderful rendering of a fictional reality that rings of truth. Bravo Lolly Winston.
Reviewed by Sarah Hickson