Assessment:
Plot/Idea: Grief Sucks (But Your Life Doesn't Have To) is a frank and funny self-help workbook chronicling the author's painful past—her father, mother, stepmother, and 10-year-old daughter, Libby, died within within 18 months of each other--and how she not only survived, but "managed somehow to come out a little stronger and wiser on the other side."
Prose: Carlock's prose is funny and fearless. ("I believe that you, too, can take the lemons that life offers you and turn them into lemonade. It might not always be sweet, and in fact that shit may still taste sour as hell sometimes, but that’s how life works.") She describes her grief in unsparing and even poetic detail. "Post-traumatic growth is like a phoenix rising out of the ashes; it’s been burned and scarred and fallen to the ground but somehow manages not only to pick itself up but to fly to new heights."
Originality: There are many self-help books to aid readers struggling through with grief, but none like Grief Sucks. The author's honesty is front and center and her TRUST method is a new take on the five stages of grief: T = Tell your truths, R = Reach out, U = Unpack your emotions, S = Search for meaning, and T = Transform your future. Grief Sucks is as much a workbook as a chronicle for readers. There's also a table for goal planning via baby steps. But even as Carlock provides solutions, the author wisely warns the reader, "If you’re reading this book because you’d like a quick fix to make your grief go away, I have some bad news for you. There is no quick fix to resolving grief."
Character/Execution: The characters come across as real people, which of course they are, but the author's gifted writing brings each to life again. Carlock has written a beautiful, well constructed book on living through loss and, eventually, thriving.
Date Submitted: October 01, 2024
Carlock has endured a seemingly overwhelming amount of tragedy, from her parents’ vicious divorce when she was eight, to her own two divorces to the year and a half in which she lost several family members, including her ten-year-old daughter, Libby. This was “the worst pain I had ever experienced,” she writes, and she addresses these losses with earthy candor. Her slow healing, especially all she’s learned about “grief, resilience, and post-traumatic growth,” informs the TRUST method at the heart of the book, a distillation of her guidance for others into a mnemonic device she’s crafted for simplicity, noting “Grief leaves most people feeling like they’ve lost about fifty IQ points.”
The book is compact and approachable, offering an inviting, honest, and sharply plainspoken survey of what the author has learned as she pulled herself “out of the suck,” with neither genre, memoir nor self-help, fully dominating. While the guidance is sound and the revelations often moving and insightful, the brisk storytelling by design emphasizes Carlock’s own experience, with touching material about her love for her family and thoughtful consideration of her own “deeply, deeply personal” choices involving medication and treatment. Throughout, she makes clear that one guiding voice is not enough—readers facing grief should seek out support and professional help.
Takeaway: Lessons and hard-won insights from a life facing grief.
Comparable Titles: Megan Devine’s It’s OK That You’re Not OK, Joanne Cacciatore’s Bearing the Unbearable.
Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A-
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
