No one in 29 year-old Charlotte Rosen's daily life knows her secret. Not her boss, not her roommate of five years, not her co-workers. No one knows that she's a widow. Then her husband's ashes are delivered to her apartment door from out of nowhere and she has to confront the life she left behind.

In doing so she learns more about grief, her husband, his family and herself.

I enjoyed Husband Material immensely. It was funny, heartbreaking and had just enough romance to keep me hopeful for the end.

Chick lit typically follows a standard formula in which a female protagonist runs into a sticky situation but ultimately gets her happy ending. Husband Material meets those guidelines, but does so without any particularly noteworthy characters or unique storylines. Charlotte's life revolves around data and rational decision making. When her husband's ashes unexpectedly show up on her doorstep, she's thrown into a tailspin of self-doubt and life-changing discoveries.

I read through this book fairly quickly, but it didn't hold my attention like other chick lit novels that I've loved. The characters were fairly stereotypical and the ending wrapped up just a little too neatly. I did enjoy the main character's profession as a coder. It's nice to see a more analytical profession in this genre. However, I was turned off when she kept putting other priorities above her job and her potential.

Anyone who enjoys a generic chick lit novel will like reading this book, but I wouldn't recommend it beyond that.

This was a super fun read with some serious and heartfelt subject matter interspersed. I really loved Charlotte and Brian—they kept me going!

Love is tricky, and looking for love can be even trickier. Charlotte is a young and single working and living in LA trying to create an app to make match-making online even easier and more accurate. She runs into her own personal crises when bits of her past reinstall themselves into her life. She was real. That was my favorite part about her: she acted how I would have acted. I recommend for a fun, light, rom-com with a feel-good ending.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Hmmmmmm. This was not a poorly written book. It was however, a little forgettable. I enjoyed it while I was reading....although I didn't have the inertia to binge read.

Overall. I enjoyed it. Was it odd that my favorite part was the dog? Anybody? Beuller? I kid...kinda. I might pick up a book by this author again. I think the writing is in there, just needs a little fine tuning.

Lets talk about what I enjoyed:

The premise.
The characters were likeable enough.
The LA scene was fun to watch.

What I didn't like:

The twist...it was a little too late.
The disorganization of the characters (way too much going on).
The ending guessed from a mile away.

I'm ending with three stars because I did finish it!

Overall, a well written book with a not so traditional storyline. I liked the main characters, and I enjoyed learning more about them as the novel progressed.

I like this author's style and look forward to reading more from her.

This book was a bit unexpected, but it was fun with an interesting twist at the end. I thought the book would be more about dating through this new app that the main character was creating, but instead, it focused on her working through her grief as a young widow after her husband's ashes were returned to her without notice. There was a romantic plot line, but it felt very secondary to the other emotional baggage the main character needed to sort through.

This book started out rough. It was hard to get through the constant pop culture references that were mentioned for the sake of mentioning - not to enhance the story. It was like hanging out with a superficial teenager.

The base of the story was interesting but fairly predictable. A beach read, but I would not recommend it. I would have loved a twist towards the end.

The first chapter is so funny and really draws in the reader however this book starts to nose dive off the deep end the more you read. I was not a fan of Charlotte, it was very hard to like her character. Everything felt forced in this book, like it had to happen it wasn’t a natural thing or a gradual progression.

I really appreciated the tone of this book. Exploring a life without a husband, and what it means to be a widow and finding a new identity and sense of self through loss. I thought the title and cover were incredibly misleading, and ultimately harm the potential of the book. It seems to look like a typical chick lit story, but what we get is actually much more than that. I enjoyed the realistic work aspects of Charlotte's life, and how analytical she is. The romance was cute, a bit forced, but ultimately a nice read!

This book wasn't what I thought it was going to be, but I still really enjoyed it. Charlotte is in pursuit of the perfect partner, but she also has a secret -- she is a widow. While Charlotte has tried to protect herself from suffering that kind of loss again, an unexpected arrival forces her to confront her grief and and reconnect with those she had been pushing away. This is an emotional read that I just couldn't put down.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced reader's copy in exchange for my review.

Charlotte Rosen is a widow. It's also her biggest secret. When she gets her late husband's ashes five years after the fact she then must start dealing with her past. I thought the premise sounded really promising. I was excited to see what happened to Charlotte and how she would come full circle from her loss. However, in practice the book was lacking that spark that would set it apart. It was okay. It wasn't a bad book, but it's not my favorite women's fiction of the year.

I could not stop reading this book. I literally had the stop myself from picking it up at work just to finish it. The premise of a girl who lost her husband and then was working on an algorithm to find a man was pretty fun. But that wasn't really what this story was about. Not really. There was a whole lot that ended being a part of it.

I thought this would be semi -predicatable turn out but it turned out to actually have a few surprises. This is probably what kept me wanting to read it.

While I did receive advance copy of this book to review, I would have bought it.

Charlotte was delightful. I thought this story was cute and emotional and my heart went out to her for keeping her widow secret a secret for five years. I enjoyed her inner monologue and was addicted to the story.

I would like to thank the publisher for the opportunity to review!

29 year old Charlotte is known as the Numbers Queen. She spends her day job performing analytics on social media and at night she's working on developing an app to use data analytics to help singles find their perfect match. She's been trying to hide the fact that she's a widow of 5 years ... until her late husband's ashes showed up at her doorstep. As she's trying to figure out what to do with the urn, other secrets are come to light and forces her to answer some tough questions about herself and her future.

I thought this was a cute book that is a light and quick read. The story is compelling and I loved the snarky dialogue!

Thanks @netgalley and @Graydon House for a copy of this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to Graydon House and Netgalley for a chance to read this title before it is released.

Charlotte, a young widow, has a good job analyzing social media performance and on her own is working on a dating app. She has a roommate that doesn’t know she’s a widow, and a mother-in-law who is a pain in the arse.

One day, Charlotte comes home to find the ashes of her late husband need to be rehomed because there was a fire where they had been. Carrying around his ashes everywhere and not being able to decide on a new place to put them wasn’t enough to sustain the story.

I was an instant fan of Belden’s previous title “Hot Mess” so thought this book would follow suit. It didn’t.

Much too late in the story a twist was introduced to help propel the plot. I hope that Belden keeps on writing and keeps on getting better, but that next time she chooses a focus with a little more depth to it. She’s a good writer, knows how to inject humor and just needs a better vehicle to carry her narrative.

Charlotte is a widow and even her roommate doesn't know about it. Her life is all of the sudden upside down when she receives an urn full of her late husband ashes. All of the sudden you realize that Charlotte doesn't have it all together and is slowly unraveling. I expected this to be rom com but it was so much more. There's a twist I didn't see coming and loved that Charlotte changed her priorities and stopped living in fear.

Charlotte has taken the time to put her life back together after a fateful loss of her husband. She has everything she thinks she needs to move forward and continue to live her life. She is thrown for a curve when she comes home to find her husbands ashes left on her doorstep. She is forced to face her ex mother in law and her husbands best friend. She is discovering things she did not know to even ask about. She is also finding the potential to move forward and find love again.

Love how the writing kept you guessing and didn't give anything away at the same time. Emily Belden is a fabulous writer with great flow to her writing that keeps you guessing.

This was a cute story about a young widow who hasn’t figured out how to move forward. When something unexpected finds itself back in her life she’s forced to reexamine everything, and everyone, she thought she knew.

On a separate note, the book is FILLED with missing words. I know it’s an ARC but whoever proofed this didn’t do a good job.

Charlotte Rosen is a successful computer programmer who has developed a program that she is trying to find a new successful relationship with. After a particularly heinous date, she receives an unexpected package at home:the ashes of her deceased husband. While she tries to handle rehoming his ashes, she must reevaluate her relationships and allow the people in her life to become closer to her. She realizes that some of the barriers to relationships she has created must be destroyed in order for her to find happiness. This was an intriguing read, as well as a quick enjoyable one. There was a well-developed story but it also had humor.

This is a hard book to review for me - it's not that it was bad, at all, and it's not that it was good. It was, in a word, underwhelming. I thought Charlotte's journey through grief was very compelling, and for that reason alone this title could be worth a read. However, I found it incredibly difficult to relate to her and most of the characters. Adding to this, there were a lot of moments that seemed ultra contrived, and it made it hard to stay really immersed in the story that was being told.