Are divorced women having a moment?

It might be my age, but I'm noticing an influx of books about divorcées and co-parents.

I have entered the period of life where my friends and acquaintances are beginning to get divorced. Some are already divorced, others are on their second marriages.

Is it this stage of my life, or are empowered divorced women having a moment right now?

Putnam, an imprint of Penguin, sent me three books featuring divorced, co-parenting women already this year. I didn’t realize the divorce through-line until after I finished all three. How interesting that three new releases within the same publishing house — published within one week of each other — tell the stories of three very different women in similar, messy situations: divorced from whiny, controlling husbands with whom they still have to co-parent.

To me that seems like a trend and not just that I am, as the internet reminds me constantly, an aging Millenial.

I personally love that divorced women are having a moment. They should. There should always be space for these stories, and maybe we’ve seen many of them before and I just never noticed. Whatever the case, I am here for the divorcées and co-parents and women finding themselves.

Married, divorced, dating — these books are for everyone.

All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman (March 11, 2025)

I had this book sitting on my nightstand for a time and something about it drew my husband in. It could be this quote on the back cover:

"The missing boy is 10-year-old Alfie Risby, and to be perfectly honest with you, he's a little shit."

The cover is also seductive (I love the British book cover so much, too). Regardless, my husband read it before I did — in record time — so I knew it would be juicy.

It’s about 31-year-old Florence Grimes, an American mother living in England and learning to navigate the private school “mum” life. Her wealthy ex-husband insists that their son go to this uppity private school he’d attended, so Florence sucks it up and tries to hide her distaste of the grossly extravagant mums she has to deal with.

When a kid in her 10-year-old son’s class goes missing on a field trip — and she finds out her son has a weird tie to the missing kid — Florence goes on full detective mode, lest her son be implicated. (Never mind that she’s a broke former rock star with no detective skills, or any skills, whatsoever.)

While putting on her detective hat, Florence has to deal with her asshole husband who makes co-parenting hard and keeping faith in herself harder. It’s a propulsive thriller that’s also funny and, in a weird way, relatable. It’s painful to love someone so much that you’d do anything — even the slightly psychotic — to keep them from harm.

The Love We Found by Jill Santopolo (March 18, 2025)

This is the sequel to Santopolo’s popular novel The Light We Lost, a Reece’s Book Club pick. I haven’t read the first book but I was able to follow along easily. It’s an epistolary story in which Lucy Carter speaks to her ex-lover who died 10 years prior, Gabe Vincent — not to be confused with her living ex-husband and father of her children.

While going through a box of Gabe’s photos (he was a photojournalist), Lucy finds a hand-written Italian address. Had Gabe kept something from her? When was he in Italy? Naturally, she buys a flight to Italy while her kids are on spring break with their father and, like amateur detective Florence Grimes in the first book, she does some sleuthing of her own.

It’s a story of love — both romantic and familial. What Lucy has with her children is special, even if her ex-husband makes co-raising them impossible.

I liked the story of this book. The premise is unique, the storytelling is smooth. It has short chapters so I flew through it in a single weekend. What I didn’t love as much was some of the dialogue. It didn’t always read authentically to me and I couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough to buy that conversations would actually go as depicted in this book.

What I liked about it was what that it follows a divorced, go-getting woman who goes after what she wants, even if her ex makes it incredibly difficult to do so. I also liked that the lover Lucy is writing (or speaking) to — Gabe — is someone she’d had an affair with while married to her now-ex. In wholesome romances like this one, you don’t see much of that, so I appreciate that Santopolo prodded that very real bruise.

Animal Instinct by Amy Shearn (March 18, 2025)

God, this book is a riot.

It follows Rachel Bloomstein, a recently divorced mother of three who spends a summer rediscovering her sexuality. It’s 2020 in Brooklyn and dating isn’t exactly a COVID-safe activity. While going on dozens of dates, Rachel frequently wishes she could pluck the best parts of each of the men and women she sees — she calls them her team — and compile them all into one person.

Given that she works in tech, she does that very thing. Enter Frankie, her AI chatbot to whom she feeds all the data she collects from her dates. She updates and reprograms Frankie as she learns more about what she does and does not like, and voilà — she has her perfect person.

The book gives me tremors of PTSD from lockdown era — the fear, the paranoia, the questioning of everything you’re doing. I read an essay the author

Amy Shearn

wrote that says, “if you’re going to get my novel and give it some hours of your life, I think I owe you the most honest and true book I can write.” It turns out that, like Rachel, the author had blown up her life by divorcing her husband of 15 years.

In the book, Rachel has a hard time reconciling the husband she once loved so much with the passive aggressive, icy man she’s co-parenting their three children with. She has to balance her husband’s vicious texts with her blossoming dating life, her friendships, and whatever you call the thing she has with her chatbot, Frankie.

It’s saucy and racy and incredibly real. I loved this book so much. AND, I get to chat with the author tomorrow! If there’s anything you’d like me to ask her, comment below.

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💥 Related 💥 My incredibly resilient friend Meredith’s forthcoming memoir, The Plan B Chronicles: Divorce. Defiance. Liberation, is a raw, insightful, and witty deep-dive into surviving divorce and rebuilding life as a single mom. If you love stories about resilience with a sharp, honest edge, pre-order it here.

As a reminder, pre-orders are SO HELPFUL for authors!

What are you reading?

What I’m reading: A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power

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Love,

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