In this book the author specifically mentions that she internalizes bad reviews and remembers one specific amazon reviewer giving her book three stars but gave an ice scraper five. I hope she won’t take my four stars as an insult, they’re certainly not intended as one.
I’ve had It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying is Okay Too), McInerney’s book about losing her husband, her father, and her pregnancy all in the same year, in my Amazon cart for approximately ever, so of course I’d read the follow up first. What can I say, I was hiding from my child in the library, I just picked what was handy.
This follows the author as she continues her life with her second husband and stepchildren, and is surprisingly joyful and funny and somber; the majority of the book is about coming to terms with continuing to find joy after tragedy, and how that is a reckoning of its own.
As she says herself, it’s like improv comedy – you have “yes, and” instead of “yes, but.” She loves her stepchildren, and it’s not more or less than her biological kids, it’s different. It’s yes, and, in the same way that she loves her deceased husband and her current one. It can be both.
It’s a warm, generous, book that I would heartily recommend for anyone who is going through trauma or even just a hard time; it’s inspirational without being treacly. It’s basically proof that you can move past unimaginable losses without undermining the loss itself.
Damn it, McInerney, I’ll give you the extra star.