Young Widows Club – Alexandra Coutts

Young Widows Club
By: Alexandra Coutts
Available November 2015

Description:
For seventeen-year-old Tam, running off to marry her musician boyfriend is the ideal escape from her claustrophobic high-school life on the island, and the ultimate rebellion against her father and stepmother. But when Tam becomes a widow just weeks later, the shell-shocked teen is forced to find her way forward by going back to the life she thought she’d moved beyond—even as her struggle to deal with her grief is forcing her to reinvent herself and reach out to others in ways she never imagined.

This Blonde’s Review:
Tam never imagined that rushing to start her life early by getting married young could leave her a widow at a young age too. When her husband dies in his sleep unexpectedly she finds herself a widow at 17 with no idea what to do with her life. When most people her age are focusing on graduation and college, she’s dealing with the loss of a spouse and the life she had planned.

I didn’t relate the Tam right away since I was never one to dive in to relationships, but the more we get to know her and her relationship the easier it is to see how her relationship would feel like home to her. In some ways her relationship and the music that made up their lives also brought her closer to the mother she lost at a young age and the lifestyle her father left behind after the loss.

I really loved the people in her widows club. The wacky leader and their crazy stunts were amusing enough to be more interesting than a regular support group that talked, but also seemed like something that could help. When you’re trying not to feel something and have to act it out, it can great and sad all the the same time to finally deal with the feelings that acting it out will bring to the surface. Even if you find yourself giving someone a bloody nose.

I liked that they had her going back to school and reexamining her future, with options she never considered before. When you see yourself focusing on building someone else’s dreams you don’t always see that you might have dreams of your own. And after such a devastating loss it is natural to believe that you won’t ever find anyone else. Especially not someone so different from the one you lost.

I enjoyed this book. I like that Tam wasn’t only dealing with the death of her husband at 17. She was also dealing with unresolved issues over her mother’s death, the way her family changed when her father remarried, and confronting her own changed future.

If you like books with characters who have to confront their feelings and decide whether they can accept new dreams and the disappointments that come with that then you’ll want to read Tam’s story.