Rating: 
Summary: Good Golly Ms. Lolly - It's a Winner!
Review: Okay - I am only 3/4 the way through this novel - but I have enjoyed every word. Sure - its about coming to terms with the loss of a loved one and having to "re-learn" everything, but Ms. Winston has written with poise and a super sense of hilarity - it made me laugh from the first chapter. Sophie (main character)goes through so many stages of change and renewal - a move to a different city, a different job, a "first" date etc, and with every stage - there are laugh-out-loud consequences. I have already made up a loan-list to people who would like to read it after me. I recommend this funny funny book to anyone and everyone.
Rating: 
Summary: fun book
Review: It was a nice light read, both funny and sad, but the ending was a little un-realistic and a little disappointing... I still would recommend it for a beach read!
Rating: 
Summary: Life after a loved one has passed
Review: This book will make you laugh, cry, and sometimes both at once. A very well told story about what life is like after a loved one has passed. You watch as Sophie grieves, loses her job, deals with her mother in law, and packs up and moves to start a new life without her husband Ethan. Life was supposed to get better for her when she decided to stay with her best friend, Ruth and when things don't seem as they can get any worse, they do. She decides to participate in a big brother/big sister program and instead of getting a cute four year old to paint and draw her pictures she gets stuck with a 13 yearold delinquent. Watch as Sophie cares and helps the young girl get her life straightened out and along the way she straightens her own life out. A very powerful and moving novel for when you feel like there's nothing left.
Rating:
Summary: incredible look at the grieving process
Review: In San Jose, thirty-six years old Sophie Stanton still mourns the loss of her spouse Ethan, who died three months ago from Hodgkin's disease. Everyone from her mother-in-law to her employer expects Sophie to get out of her funk and return to routines.However, routines are painful as they invoke Ethan such as when Sophie drives through the garage door to inform her deceased husband that a Flip Wilson classic was on the radio. Relief from her feelings come in cartons of praline and cream for breakfast and related soul food. Work is no better as it is hard to get it up when you are responsible for running a PR campaign for a scrotal patch to help males with their testosterone count. Desperate for a change, Sophie heads to Oregon to be with her best friend and try to regain some equilibrium as she goes slowly though the stages of grieving. This is an incredible look at the grieving process through the eyes of a person going through pain though she was prepared for her spouse's death. Most interesting is how people react to Sophie which can be categorized as either move on already or the inability to say words like cancer or death in her presence. GOOD GRIEF is a tremendous book that lucidly insists that grieving is not only personal, but breaking plates is okay if it relieves some of the stress. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: So this is how women think and cope
Review: My girlfriend said I should read this book. The bunny rabbit shoes put me off but I read it anyway, and it really is great. While I enjoyed the story, and was rooting for Sophie all the way, I also got to understand better how women cope with bad things. I've now given my girlfriend a book to read, to see how men deal with grief and loneliness. It's called in The Ghost Country by Peter Hillary and John Elder, and it's a masterpiece. And my girlfriend, she loves it!!!
Rating:
Summary: I Loved This Book
Review: I wanted to take a break from lots of heavy-duty reading so I ordered this book bassed upon a good review that I'd read. It
just sucked me in from the beginning and I found myself reading well into the night.
Winston's character of Sophie is well done and I think her grieving process is sincere and insightful. The book is a great and relaxing read but having gone through the grieving process recently, I think her feelings are spot-on without being overdone.
Some of the characters are predictable, but that doesn't mar this great first novel.
Rating:
Summary: A good read....but
Review: There are some genuinely funny moments in this book, but at other times the humor seems forced or even silly. And as another reviewer said, sometimes the author can't seem to resist the urge to wrap things up too neatly and so the ending in particular feels pat and predictable. It just feels like the book is trying too hard. Two others I would recommend on the subject of grief..._PS, I Love You_ by Cecelia Ahearn, which is also sometimes predictable but has good characters and doesn't wrap things up so neatly, and _Alison's Automotive Repair Manual_ by Brad Barkley, which tells a very funny, moving tale about a young widow trying to restore a car in a small town...it's hilarious, sad, heartfelt, and never ever predictable. All in all, I would recommend _Good Grief_ but with strong reservations. Maybe 2.5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: A poignant tale that will draw you in from the first page
Review: Sophie Stanton wants to be a "Jackie Kennedy kind of widow. Slim and composed, elegant and graceful." She does a decent job of it until three months after her husband's death when she drives her car through the garage door ... twice. As her grief and despair drag her down in their undertow, she becomes more of a "Jack Daniels kind of widow --- wailing in the supermarket and mowing through the salad bar, hair all crazy like an unmade bed." Married for only three years, Sophie is a widow at thirty-six, having lost her husband to cancer. She sits in a lonely house with a leak she doesn't know to fix. Her job is a joke, with the boss from hell. Her only family lives three thousand miles away from her Silicon Valley home, where she moved to be with her husband. As she works her way through the stages of grief --- denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance --- Sophie adds a few of her own: eating an entire family pack of Oreos in one sitting under the bedcovers, having a breakdown in the produce section of the grocery store, and going to work in her bathrobe and pink bunny slippers. Unable to stand her empty house any longer, Sophie decides to start over in Ashland, Oregon, where her best friend Ruth lives. She toasts her decision with a martini that she drinks from the empty urn that once held Ethan's ashes. "I drink my martini from the urn, its square edge sharp against my lips. Everything in the room begins to soften, and moving up to Oregon doesn't seem so scary." This is a chance for her to be "Sophie Enid Stanton: widow. Starting over." She can't outrun her grief, but in Ashland Sophie finds that there is "solace in offering solace to others." She applies to the Big Sister program, and instead of the adorable seven- or eight-year-old she had envisioned, her "little sister" is Crystal, a thirteen-year-old with more problems that Sophie. Crystal lives with her indifferent single mother, struggles in school and has a dangerous fascination with fire. Things continue not go smoothly as Sophie take a job as a waitress in a local restaurant. After a series of mishaps, she is relocated from the dining room to the kitchen --- a blessing in disguise because she's soon creating and preparing desserts and enjoying it --- an experience that leads her to open her own bakery. Her love life is slower in coming around than her professional life, as the handsome actor she meets just might be too good to be true. After all, she reasons, he must harbor a "dark, psycho-killer secret because everyone knows all the nice, smart, normal men are married. Only the trolls are left." A novel about a woman coping with grief might seem off-putting, but not in Lolly Winston's hands. Sophie's circumstances are the catalyst for the unfolding of the story, and Winston combines emotion and humor to create a poignant tale that will draw you in from the first page. GOOD GRIEF is a story about love, loss, friendship, courage, and most of all, renewal. In the end, Jackie Kennedy or Jack Daniels, Sophie realizes it doesn't matter. Her life is no longer defined by being a widow. --- Reviewed by Shannon McKenna
Rating:
Summary: Very good and very heartfelt
Review: 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. Excellent read and I was sorry this book ended, I fell in love with the characters!
Rating:
Summary: Extremely insightful
Review: Extremely insightful and must read book about the impact that grief can have on your life. the self abuse the occurs and the final courage and determination it takes to survive and start again.
This is an extremely courageous books-something that I am very fond of.
Several other courageous books i have read lately are Nightmares Echo, Running With Scissors,Lucky and A Child Called It
| 
