Something so beautiful

April roundup and grief recs

The bistro table at the edge of the world

Hi friends,

I’m sick, so this roundup is going to be on the shorter side. I’ve been sick on and off for months. I foolishly thought I had a good immune system, but turns out I just never spent time around children. Now, like clockwork, I catch what they catch. Vika doesn’t. She has whatever magical mom immunity that step-parents aren’t afforded.

But. I started writing a new novel. It’s a love story but it has grief at its center. I don’t know if I can pull it off but I have about 18K words thus far and I’m obsessed with it, which is a good sign, I think.

I’ve been reading about grief to get into the mindset (and listening to grief songs, which for me are a lot of Jewel and Florence and the Machine :). If you have recs, I’d love to see/hear them.

Thus far I’ve read A Man Called Ove, The Astonishing Color of After, The Music of Bees, and The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World. The last one absolutely floored me. The book is fiction, but it’s about …