Julie's Review: Husband Material

Author: Emiliy Belden
Series: None
Publication Date: December 30, 2019
Publisher: Graydon House
Pages: 304
Obtained: publisher via Netgalley
Genre:  Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary Romance
Rating: 4/5
Bottom Line: Fun read with a serious side
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Grab

Summary: Twenty-nine-year-old Charlotte Rosen has a secret: she’s a widow. Ever since the fateful day that leveled her world, Charlotte has worked hard to move forward. Great job at a hot social media analytics company? Check. Roommate with no knowledge of her past? Check. Adorable dog? Check. All the while, she’s faithfully data-crunched her way through life, calculating the probability of risk—so she can avoid it. Yet Charlotte’s algorithms could never have predicted that her late husband’s ashes would land squarely on her doorstep five years later. Stunned but determined, Charlotte sets out to find meaning in this sudden twist of fate, even if that includes facing her perfectly coiffed, and perfectly difficult, ex-mother-in-law—and her husband’s best friend, who seems to become a fixture at her side whether she likes it or not. But when her quest reveals a shocking secret, Charlotte is forced to answer questions she never knew to ask and to consider the possibility of forgiveness. And when a chance at a new life arises, she’ll have to decide once and for all whether to follow the numbers or trust her heart. ~amazon.com 

Review: There's nothing like having your past hit you square in the eye than getting your husband's ashes in the mail because a fire has destroyed the mausoleum he was housed in. This means that Charlotte Rosen is going to have to deal with all the unpleasant memories that she has buried for 5 years. You see no one currently in her life (besides her parents who live on the other coast) knows she's a widow. After her husband, Decker died, she was depressed for a long time and then reinvented herself and began a new life. She chose a roommate who she liked but didn't share much with and cut herself off from the friends her and Decker had together.

She hasn't had a relationship since he died and threw herself into her work, analytics. Now she looks at every thing through a data lens with no room for letting her heart lead her astray. Losing Decker nearly destroyed her and she doesn't want that to happen again. So by day she runs the analytics for a Social Media influencer firm but at night she's working on developing a dating app that will help her find her perfect match.

As we all know things never go as you have them mapped out for your life. Charlotte isn't prepared for the curveballs life threw her and she needs time to process and to figure out what she's going to do. She also wasn't prepard for the people who would be back in her life or for the new people that would be brught into it.

I really liked Charlotte. She was a bit of a basketcase when Decker showed back up because she had closed that part of her life off  but when she was forced to deal with the circumstances, she grew up a bit, dealt with her past and was finally ready to move on. Most importantly she let those she had previously pushed away back into her life and was able to create more real bonds because of it. It also shows the reader the many views of dealing with death.

Google+