Title: Someone Used to Love Me: A positive walk through the loss of a spouse
Author: Susan Joy Gross
Publisher: Toplink Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 978-1949169379
Pages: 30
Genre: Family & Relationships/Parent & Adult Child
Reviewed by: Marcy Koltun-Crilley

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Someone Used to Love Me has a sad message, one of the loss of a spouse. Author Susan Joy Gross creates a very sad theme, embellishing each page with a drawing and a brief few lines of prose. Aspects of how a person’s loss and loneliness can overcome even the strongest of personalities are described and drawn, showing the life adjustments one needs to make after such an event. What becomes the message is that a sad situation can also be a good lesson to teach children about “why mommy feels the way she does,” after the loss of her husband.

How the bed had two people sleeping together in it and now has one, how things done together are now done alone, even the tasks of removing one of the names on bank accounts are mentioned. The sadness puts the widow into a deep depression affecting her sleep, appetite, ability to cope with every day events and friendships. Gross points other couples begin not to call because they feel the widow no longer fits in with their happiness and even her friends tend to avoid her.

Someone Used to Love Me is a rather short book, appropriate for getting the point across. Susan Joy Gross leaves the ending open by writing “more to come” suggesting there will be a sequel showing the character emerging from her depression and even possibly putting her future of love and happiness together. This would be an excellent “pair” of books should that become the case.

As for now, the sad theme can be subtitled “real life” because these situations occur every day. Someone Used to Love Me is an ideal tool for showing children just what the parent is going through, in a third-person way. It will help both the parent and child to cope with the sadness by seeing they are not alone in their feelings, as many people have to go through this. Should Susan Joy Gross continue the reconstruction of the character’s happiness in future publications, this will eventually have a happy ending. This is a very practical and down to earth book and very easy to read. I highly recommend this to anyone who has been recently widowed, or a young family member who is close to someone who has suffered a loss.