i will take a good memoir over a good meal, any day. okay that’s a lie.

I have noticed that memoirs written by middle aged women tend to come with certain messages, or warnings really. Many of them, you should read before you get married. You should read if you are going through a divorce. You should read before you sign up for Match.com because dating websites can actually set you up with possible rapists. You should read if you are or have gone through a medical crisis. I mean, most memoirs cover one of these unfortunate topics. Margaret Overton, with her series of extremely bad luck, touches on them all in Good in a Crisis: A Memoir.

You may think that such tragedies would be the making for a very sad life story, not with Overton behind the pen. We are talking the messiest misadventures, and she is actually quite hilarious about most of it. She’s honest, intelligent (well, she IS a doctor), and her journey is worth reading about, even if it’s just to remind you to appreciate the life that you have and the love that you share it with. The manfriend is getting an extra big smooch after this one.