The Collected Regrets of Clover

This book deserves to be a bestseller! I haven’t enjoyed a book this much in a long time. Not a sad book about regrets, but insight into living life well.
From a young age, Clover wasn’t a typical kid. Losing her parents at six, she is raised by her scholarly grandfather with outings to the bark park to observe dog behavior, and afternoons at the bookstore. She never learned how to play and interact with other kids, and by age 37, she still feels uncomfortable in society.
As a death doula, Clover sits with the dying helping to make the journey easier. Most people when dying reflect on life with regrets, confessions, or advice. Clover has 3 separate journals which she carefully transcribes the final words into the appropriate journal. Clover is still grieving her grandfather’s death after many years, and although her life is surrounded by people expressing regret for not living life more fully, she is unable to take their advice. Avoiding personal encounters, she escapes into 90’s romcoms over and over. Fortunately for Clover, Slyvie, a vivacious new neighbor, cracks through Clover’s walls of self protection and insecurity. For the first time in her life, Clover has a friend. It’s a real treat experiencing Clover’s emergence, and I think everyone can pick up some insight. As one very special dying man said to Clover as he lay dying, “The secret to a beautiful death is living a beautiful life.”
Many thanks to netgalley and Viking for this advance copy, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend.

What an absolutely glorious, warm book that encourages us all to not just be alive, but to really live. I adored the character of Clover who as a death doula is more comfortable in the land of the dying, than the living. In fact she deliberately separates herself from the living as a protective barrier against her emotions. The dying don't stick around long enough to make lasting relationships,and participating in the living world has become exhausting for her. As she shepherds people.out of this world, Clover carefully records their regrets, advice and confessions, in notebooks, and attempts to put right their wrongs, and live out their advice. It's all just wonderfully human and honest.
Anyone who has experienced grief will find this book deeply comforting, and realistic. As an ex emergency services worker, on more than one occasion, I've been the last person to hear someone's voice, and the only person to witness their death. This book touched me to my core, and has in all likelihood helped heal some of the trauma I experienced in that occupation. I cried, and I healed, and I'll continue to be cautiously reckless. What a wonderful book!

The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer is a charming but never saccharine book that really will warm your heart while also gently kicking you in the butt in an attempt to inspire you to live your life to the fullest.
Clover is a quiet, solitary woman who works as a death doula In New York , providing support and companionship to those nearing the end of their lives. At home in the apartment that she once shared with the grandfather who raised her from the age of six, she curls up with with her dog and records their last words in one of three notebooks , Advice, Confessions and Regrets. Each day she picks a page from one of these books at random and tries to follow the advice or make up for one of the confessions or regrets as a last remembrance of her client. She is reasonably contented in her life of isolation but still sometimes wonders about what might have been if her life had been different. When her latest client, Claudia ,a woman in her nineties with only weeks to live , admits that despite an amazing life filled with travel for her work as a photo journalist before she settled down, married and had a family, she has one regret that she has lived with for decades, Clover is determined to try to make it right. Claudia confesses that she met the love of her life on one of her last photo assignments in France , but because she was already engaged she left him behind and came home to New York. With only an old love letter to go on Clover embarks on a quest to find out what happened to Claudia's great love and along the way she starts to realise that she cannot live in the past, she needs to open herself up to what the future may hold and live life to the fullest.
This is a book that moves at a gentle pace and one where characters take priority over plot. There is a story that runs through the book and it is well told but it was the characters that made me want to keep reading, and not just Clover and Claudia, but all of the other more secondary characters who were so well written with an attention to detail that I really admired. The title and subject matter might make it seem like this is a sad book, but in fact it is anything but, it is uplifting and full of hope and I really hope that it gets the success it deserves.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own,

2023 Book 14 - The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer

I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Releases 3rd May 2023.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

It's only April, but I'm already prepared to say that if you read one book this year - make it this one.

Clover is a death doula - rather than bringing life into the world, she helps guide life gently out of it, in a dignified and compassionate manner.

She lives her life through those of her clients, and honours their biggest regrets by doing those things herself and thinking of them as she does. Clover is happy with her life - until she takes on a client who manages to unknowingly be the impetus that turns her world upside down.

This is brilliantly written, so easy to read and fall in love with the characters, and grabs you to make you listen. It has shot way up my list of favourite books already - I'll be banging on about it for a while so be prepared.

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