Joy Rosenberg thinks she's the luckiest person in the world, with satisfying work, a passionate marriage, an excellent bicycle and two great kids. But when ten-year-old Jenny is killed, Joy's life is destroyed. Tortured by visions of the accident and twisted by guilt, she feels doomed to a life of unremitting darkness. Family, Judaism, work, athletics-nothing will deliver what she wants the most: Jenny. Joy struggles to live a life of purpose and compassion while grief is tearing it apart. Can she forgive herself and learn to love again, or will she lose her husband and son forever? An emotional story told in honest and haunting detail, Without Jenny is an intimate portrait of a loving marriage stretched to the breaking point by the unspeakable.
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[MOMENTS LIKE THIS, Joy thought, were dangerously close to perfect]***
(@koehlerbooks, 20 April 2018, 232 pages, ebook, copy from the author and voluntarily reviewed)
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I need lots of hugs and a teddy and rather a lot of chocolate and maybe a box of hankies after reading this. I am drained let me tell you. I've read quite a lot of books about grief. For some reason, it's a subject that appeals to me. I have no idea why. I'm strange that way. Without Jenny is written in a very simple, straight forward way and I was pulled into the story from the opening line. The book starts off with a bang focusing on the accident that takes Jenny's life. I was in tears after a few pages and several times reading the book. The author lost his own child and you can tell he is writing from his own experience. The pain comes across as very real. Without Jenny is heart-breaking portrait of loss and grief. I found it devastating.