The Widowed Book Review - Sex~Kitten.net

I've written about getting rid of men one way or another, violent and more off handedly. It's part stress release and part vendetta. Sometimes more of one than the other. Mostly it's amusing for me. If you can’t laugh at yourself, you’re really missing something. I don’t really want to stuff some poor bastard into a small suitcase and dump him over a cliff, I just like laughing at the idea and at myself for thinking of it. The more creative, cunning and wicked the more I laugh.

Anyway, it really was coincidence that I read two books in a row both about dead husbands. In both cases the man was dead before the story began. The first was 'PS, I Love You' by Cecilia Ahern. She wrote about getting on with life and learning to open yourself to new experiences and people. I really enjoyed reading this book. I bought it after seeing the cover in the bookstore. I know you can't judge a book by it's cover but in this case you can. It was a pastel blue and pink with a bow and a little white bit of note with the book's title printed on it.

The book is not fluff, if that's how you would see that. It was positive and uplifting. The writer seemed to really understand the feelings of sadness and hopelessness which I've felt myself after the divorce. A death is surely different and yet the same in some ways. There is loss and guilt and fear of being alone and having to do it all by yourself. But, the heroine of this book does manage, with the help of friends and family, to get back on her feet.

Holly gets notes, once a month, written by her husband before he died. The notes are instructions for getting on with her life, taking on new challenges, getting over past challenges and putting him in her past, as a lot of good memories. At the end of the book Holly meets a nice sounding fellow but we are left not knowing how things turn out for her. It's just a part of her life we see, not right to the end. I don't mind an ending like that, it's realistic as no one can step into a time machine and see right to the end. However, we can all imagine the ending we would like to see for Holly or for ourselves.

The second book was 'The Guardian' by Nicholas Sparks. I didn't care for this one as much as the first. The woman had no family and the friends were all people she met through the now deceased husband. Then she was further isolated and made victim-like by having a bad past, living on the streets. In spite of how the reader was expected to feel sorry for her I never really felt she was a fully developed person. During the story she becomes stalked by a man she dated for awhile. Then she falls in love with Mike, a friend of her husband. There is no real reason for them to fall in love. It seems they fall in love because that's what the writer wrote.

I also didn't like the focus on the stalker and thriller aspects. I would have enjoyed reading about how she copes with being single again, how she pulls herself back together. Instead we read more about her being stalked and feeling victimized. So, to me, it's just another book using a woman as a plot victim. Women are easy victims. Also, there was a dog in the book who was played up as her dead husband/ guardian angel. This was not brought out very much and could have been a lot more interesting than the whole stalker thing. I was disappointed in this story as it seems the whole widow plot was just tacked on to add pages to the finished stalker plot, the real page turner/ book seller.

I start reading a book about women making changes in their lives looking for answers for my own life. Hoping to find some snippet of idea which will bring something more to me and my life. I did find something along those lines in 'PS, I Love You'. That books gives hope and shows the character at her worst and building up and back sliding, finding support in places she hadn't expected. Eventually, she recreates herself with a new job and a better idea of who she is and where she wants to be. She also gets to know some of the people in her life in new ways.

Of course, none of this means I will give up on the theme of getting rid of an inconvenient man here and there.