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Dear Dead Husband

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Dear Dead Husband

By: Carla Young
Narrated by: Stacey O'Brien, Tom Garland
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A novel about a woman’s unconventional journey through grief…

Eliza never expected to marry until she met Joseph.

He made everything better, never minded about her habit of saying the wrong thing or her chronic nervous sweatiness. Their life together was perfect—well, okay, not perfect, but pretty damn good.

Until he died. On their wedding anniversary.

With the second anniversary of his death looming, Eliza is still grieving. What’s worse, her meddling mother-in-law and her casserole-wielding, platitude-giving busybody neighbours won’t leave her alone.

Blackmailed into going to therapy, Eliza has no choice but to comply.

Ever the rebel, complying doesn’t mean she has to cooperate. When her therapist suggests writing letters to her husband to get at her feelings, Eliza pens off a sarcastic response written to her Dear Dead Husband.

What follows is a series of rants aimed at everyone around her.

From the so-called friends who never showed up for the funeral to the village gossips who are secretly grateful their husbands aren’t dead, no one is safe from her harsh brand of truth-telling.

But there’s one truth Eliza won’t admit, even to herself.

(Warning: Contains graphic descriptions of casserole violence. Reader discretion advised.)

A razor-sharp, darkly funny novel about love, loss and finding your way back, Dear Dead Husband is perfect for fans of The Wedding People and Lessons in Chemistry. Grab your copy Dear Dead Husband today.

©2026 Carla Young (P)2026 Carla Young
Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Satire Women's Fiction Funny
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"Dear Dead Husband" opens strong and closes even stronger, which isn't always a given with debut fiction. The structure of flashbacks pulling further and further from the present day was a lovely touch and kept me engaged even when the main timeline slowed. The middle stretch could have used a bit more momentum, much like Eliza herself, the story sometimes seems stuck in its own grief and needs a gentle nudge to move forward.

Stacey O'Brien's narration is a real highlight. She brings warmth and precision to Eliza, carrying the emotional weight of the story with real skill, and she's easily the reason to choose the audiobook over the page. I did find myself wishing for a single narrator throughout though. When I read to myself I hear all the characters in my own voice, so the addition of a second performer for the male characters interrupted the flow rather than adding to it. That's more a note on the production choice than on either narrator's performance.

One small aside for British readers: a few Canadian-inflected word choices ("toward" rather than "towards", "snuck" and the like) crop up despite the UK setting. It's a minor thing, easy to look past.

Worth a listen for the ending and for Stacey's performance, even if the pacing could have been tighter in places.

A promising debut with some pacing hiccups

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