The Widow’s Season by Laura Brodie "had me at hello" with its beguiling first sentence: "Sarah McConnell’s husband had been dead three months when she saw him in the grocery store." Right away I knew it was going to be a kiss-the-day-goodbye kind of book.
Hours passed and not only had I burned my dinner, I stayed up way past my bedtime. At one point I was so enthralled by its quiet and steady pace that during one of its most suspenseful moments I almost fell off my chair when my phone rang. A simple knock on the door in The Widow’s Season coincided with that first ring, unsettling me more than any horror novel could.
Brodie’s novel has the ability to jar you more than once throughout its story of a woman grieving…whether for her husband or the marriage she thought she had — or maybe even something she never really had is what propels things forward. Part of its magic is how you don’t know at first what it’s going to be: A mystery? A ghost story? A second coming of age? Brodie’s novel contains plot twists (things you never see coming in a way only a masterful storyteller can provide) but more importantly it reminds us that (just like life) good stories are less about thrills and more about relationships with ourselves and with other people.