Why am I passionate about this?

I wanted to make sense of death when my brother suddenly died. I wanted an outlet for my grief and I wanted my brother to live on in my story when he couldn’t in reality. I also want to think that there’s life beyond death. I want to believe in it so much because it’s hard to fathom someone being ripped out of your life all of a sudden. I know death. I know grief. I have faced them. I don’t understand why it had to happen, but I could imagine that there’s an extension of life beyond this realm. If I couldn’t find closure in real life, I may as well find closure in my imagination. This story is my imagination writing its own happy ending.


I wrote

Life, Everlasting

By C.D. Loza,

Book cover of Life, Everlasting

What is my book about?

Peter wakes up with no memory of his life. Who is he? As the truth slowly unfolds, he struggles to…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Year of Magical Thinking

C.D. Loza Why did I love this book?

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion is Didion’s most personal and most heartbreaking work. This was her personal account of loss after the death of her husband, while her daughter was in a hospital.

I read this when I was trying to make sense of my own personal loss. This has helped me greatly in trying to wrap my head around the unthinkable. With her clear and concise writing, her words spoke to me on a personal level about how to soldier when an unexpected tragedy happens. It made me go on and live even for just another day. And then another day. Until the days become weeks and months.

By Joan Didion,

Why should I read it?

14 authors picked The Year of Magical Thinking as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From one of America's iconic writers, a portrait of a marriage and a life - in good times and bad - that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. A stunning book of electric honesty and passion.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill. At first they thought it was flu, then pneumonia, then complete sceptic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later - the night before New Year's Eve -the Dunnes were just…


Book cover of A Grief Observed

C.D. Loza Why did I love this book?

This book was a more cerebral book about grief. Observing grief as if it was something to pick apart and understand. A kind of detachment that I needed when the weight of my own loss was unbearable.

This book helped me understand rather than simply feel (which was overwhelming at that time) what happened. It provided explanations on things I could barely explain to myself. Even though it was a struggle, this book made me see grief from a different perspective other than my own. It also helped me understand where I was in my own process of mourning and provided me some comfort when it was hard to find.

By C. S. Lewis,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked A Grief Observed as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The perennial classic: this intimate journal chronicling the Narnia author's experience of grief after his wife's death has consoled readers for half a century with its 'sensitive and eloquent' magic (Hilary Mantel)

'An intimate, anguished account of a man grappling with the mysteries of faith and love ... Elegant and raw ... A powerful record of thought and emotion experienced in real time.' Guardian

'Raw and modern ... This unsentimental, even bracing, account of one man's dialogue with despair becomes both compelling and consoling ... A contemporary classic.' Observer

'A source of great consolation ... Lewis deploys his genius for…


Book cover of Grief

C.D. Loza Why did I love this book?

This is a short novel, a slim book that packs a lot in its pages. A fictional work about the loss of a loved one and the emptiness of one’s life. How do you fill your days? How do you go on with your life when every street, every building holds a memory of the one you lost?

This was a deeply emotional work of fiction that speaks to my own empty days after the loss. It felt as if I was walking with the main character as he went through his days trying to find purpose and meaning. It speaks to my own guilt, my own survivor’s guilt. Why am I alive when someone isn’t? How do I rediscover the colors of the world when all I see is black? What does my life, my future hold when every waking day feels like a struggle to get out of bed? Holleran’s book was a meditation on loss and grief, one that I needed to read in the darkness of my solitude.

By Andrew Holleran,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Grief as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the tradition of Michael Cunningham's The Hours, a beautiful novel destined to become a classic

Reeling from the recent death of his invalid mother, a worn, jaded professor comes to our nation's capital to recuperate from his loss. What he finds there--in his repressed, lonely landlord, in the city's mood and architecture, and in the letters and journals of Mary Todd Lincoln--shows him new, poignant truths about America, yearning, loneliness, and mourning itself.

Since Andrew Holleran first burst onto the scene with 1978's groundbreaking Dancer from the Dance, which has been continuously in print, he has been dazzling readers…


Book cover of The Odd Sea

C.D. Loza Why did I love this book?

One fine day, sixteen-year-old Ethan walks down his driveway and then vanishes. This was the short description of the book and I immediately picked it up. Instead of being a thriller, this book deals with the aftermath of Ethan’s disappearance, how his family and friends searched for him with little success. More than that, this was a book without a definitive happy ending.

As I was going through grief, a story that doesn’t wrap everything nicely in a bow was very cathartic for me. This book helped me accept that not everything in life ends in happily ever after. This opened me to the bittersweet nature of life, how loss is very much a part of it, and that not everything has to make sense. Things happen that make no sense at all and that’s the most bitter pill I had to learn to swallow.

By Frederick Reiken,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Odd Sea as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“A haunting first novel that takes a horrifying family calamity and turns it into a form of magic.”—The New York Times

On a sunny spring morning, sixteen-year-old Ethan Shumway walks down his gravel driveway, turns the bend, and vanishes without a trace. As police search for clues, Ethan's devastated family and friends—from his parents and four siblings to the older woman who was more than a teacher to Ethan—grapple for answers in the teenager's enigmatic life. As this elusive mystery slowly weaves its way into the fabric of the family, Ethan's younger brother, Philip, becomes the last, most stubborn searcher…


Book cover of A Man Called Ove

C.D. Loza Why did I love this book?

A Man Called Ove opens with Ove’s attempt to take his own life. The story immediately lured me in. Who, in the darkest days of their lives, didn’t think of ending it all? It’s not that you want to die. You just want to stop feeling the pain of living.

Equal parts comedy and tragedy, this book had me smiling, laughing, and crying. A touching novel about living again and finding something that’s worth living for, this was the book I needed to find the rainbow after the storm. This was the book I needed to feel hopeful, to pull myself together, and go on with life even if that life has been burdened by loss.

By Fredrik Backman,

Why should I read it?

23 authors picked A Man Called Ove as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'THE PERFECT HOLIDAY READ' Evening Standard

'A JOY FROM START TO FINISH' - Gavin Extence, author of THE UNIVERSE VERSUS ALEX WOODS

There is something about Ove.

At first sight, he is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots - neighbours who can't reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d'etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents' Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets.

But isn't it rare, these days, to find…


Explore my book 😀

Life, Everlasting

By C.D. Loza,

Book cover of Life, Everlasting

What is my book about?

Peter wakes up with no memory of his life. Who is he? As the truth slowly unfolds, he struggles to come to terms with where he is now. Meanwhile, Gino and Theresa move to the US for a new life. After decades of being apart, they are forced to live together in a foreign land. As past wounds surface, Theresa grapples with what it means to start again.

Told in alternating voices of Peter and Theresa, Life, Everlasting, is a story of new beginnings, of finding one’s place in strange grounds, and of discovering that life goes on for both the departed and those left behind. 

Book cover of The Year of Magical Thinking
Book cover of A Grief Observed
Book cover of Grief

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Christmas Actually

By Lisa Darcy,

Book cover of Christmas Actually

Lisa Darcy Author Of The Pact

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Cat lover Traveler Reader Amateur tennis player Foodie

Lisa's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

Every picture tells a story, but it’s not always the one we expect or remember. Christmas Actually is a festive drama about family and forgiveness and a snapshot of modern family life, addressing Instagram to motherhood and everything in between.

Why Christmas? My publisher wanted my new novel to have a festive theme, specifically set in Australia–sun, surf, sunburn, and prawns. Christmas in Australia is very different from Christmas in the UK, USA, and Canada. We typically wear shorts and t-shirts, eat salad and seafood for Christmas lunch, and play beach cricket in the afternoon. Despite the season, conflicts, secrets,…

Christmas Actually

By Lisa Darcy,

What is this book about?

Time spent with family can be challenging, especially at Christmas actually…

Kate Cavendish is stuck in a rut. That is until a former colleague contacts her and offers her a chance to fulfil her lifelong dream of becoming a successful photographer.

With her focus pulled in all directions by her children, her pregnant sister, her newly-dating mother, and the niggling worry that her husband might be having an affair, Kate is filled with self-doubt.

Then as the countdown to Christmas begins, and memories of her own childhood resurface, Kate’s anxiety deepens – both personally and professionally. Can she move on…


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Interested in grief, brothers, and neighbourhoods?

Grief 90 books
Brothers 114 books
Neighbourhoods 31 books