Elizabeth Benedict, Almost

Well, this was a lovely book. Narrator Sophy Chase is almost divorced when she finds out that her husband, Will, has died. She leaves her new boyfriend to fly back to Swansea, an island off of Massachusetts, to deal with things—her grief, her guilt, her stepdaughters, the funeral, the dog she left behind when she left. Sophy's desperate for answers about Will's sudden death, but there aren't any firm conclusions on offer here. That's the beauty of the book: It eschews Hallmark Channel certainty for ambiguity and moral grays. By the end of the story, after the funeral and a couple of other dramas piled on top of it, Sophy's character has moved forward in her life, but it's a subtle shift only, to a subtly better place. It's not a Hallmark ending, that is, but a realistic one.