I thought this was really well written and I look forward to reading more from this author in the future. I think it will find readers at our library, so we will definitely be purchasing for the collection.

I read this book for personal reasons. Mrs. Hill writes beautifully about the loss of a parent during one of the toughest times we have endured as a people. Her descriptions of pain, fear, and struggles during the pandemic made me feel as if I were there with her enduring her trials. Such a wonderful book showing us God’s love for us during our hardest moments.

This book is truly special. Marsha Gray Hill's tribute to her mother is heartfelt and sincere, resonating deeply with readers. It also sheds light on the impact of COVID-19 on families, giving insight into the challenges many have faced. Hill's openness about her emotions helps readers connect with her story, drawing them in with empathy. Beyond honoring her mother, the book offers comfort and guidance for those dealing with grief, providing genuine support.

Grief and Grits is a daughter’s beautiful, and honest testimony to her dear mother. The events described happened during the time when the world was anxious, confused, worried and scared… the global pandemic. Something for everyone to connect with.. Thank you netgalley and the publisher for the arc in exchange for a review

Having just lost my father I was drawn to this title. What a hopeful book. It's written beautifully and I was easily into the stories she shared. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

It’s difficult for me to review a book about grief as everyone experiences it differently. This is a story of a daughter honoring her mother who died due to COVID-19, which adds a whole other element.

Unfortunately, this one didn’t quite hit the mark for me. Several parts seemed repetitive, and the author seemed to focus on anger and frustration throughout, and perhaps some judgment that felt off-putting.

Maybe not enough time has passed or maybe that’s exactly the feelings she wanted to convey. Like I said, every person experiences grief differently.

It’s a mix of self-help type of solutions and personal stories, but overall, the book felt disconnected. It read like haphazard journal entries without a strong throughline to pull it all together.

This book is not a good fit for me or my interests. It will appeal to many of the people in my library's service area, so I purchased a copy to share.

Thank you NetGalley and BookishFirst for the ARC.

The Good

I. Discusses ageism, mortality, death, ageing, transitioning from being parented to being a parent, care for young vs old, covid, medical prejudice towards elderly, trauma, fear of death, and more.

II. It talks about tough conversations that do not get talked about as much as they should. By talking about these things, you are able to sit with the feelings that you may not be truly processing through.

The Bad

Repetitive: They could have collapsed some chapters/ pages or went deeper into certain topics like COVID.

Thoughts

I. This sense that there is so much trauma being carried around from death and things that happen in life without a catharsis.

II. The urge is to push forward because life keeps going without a way to process things.

III. There is not only a burying of emotions but also accountability. Thus, there does not have to be larger change in all issues that became more transparent during covid (like flaws in medical system, how folks view the elderly, etc).

IV. This was a sad read at times but I am happy I read it.

*Thank you so much to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the chance to review an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

This was such a great read and is very well written. The author went into great detail and made it relatable to many. I really enjoyed this book!

I realized while reading this that I know the author's husband slightly- we went to high school together. That made it more interesting to me, of course. And I appreciate her love for her family and especially her mother, but I do think she needs a good editor. There is a lot of repetition. There is an Instagram page with the same name that was recommended to me and at first I thought it was the same writer, but it isn't.. That could be confusing! Anyway, I know this is her first book and I wish her all the best.

A powerful memoir about the racial implication of COVID 19, the pandemic and the epidemic of racism, the realities of care and consciousness in community in the raw detailing of grief and loss. It was such a beautiful legacy to see her mother's life lived so vibrantly and beautifully through these pages. I appreciated the care this book takes on the perspective of parents who are truly just doing their best for themselves and their families, found and neutral. I am better to have read this book and so grateful for the words that were shared with us.

Grief and Grits (Memoir) | Marsha Gray Hill | ⭐⭐⭐⭐

At once heart-warming, evocative, reflective and almost conversational, Grief and Grits, while at its core is a daughter's homage to her departed mother; also poses some tough questions for us to ponder on.

This one's like a most heartfelt, hard-hitting and intimate rendezvous with a long lost friend, which makes you feel an entire range of emotions and leaves you with so many thoughts.

📖📖📖📖📖
Adeline Gray has lived a full life. A charitable, upright, truly Christian woman; with children, grand children and great grand children in double digits. She has beaten cancer, has been ravaged by dementia, has lost her loving husband of 51 years and still remains ever gentle, graceful and loving.
As age creeps up on her, her loving daughter has meticulously planned her last days to be happy, comfortable and even her funeral to be a grand sendoff. However, COVID sweeps in to destroy all plannings and calculations, and leaves frustration, grief and remorse in its wake.
📖📖📖📖📖

Through funny, relatable anecdotes; Marsha Gray does a wonderful job of painting us a portrait of a most extraordinary woman, her mother, Adeline.
While this would itself have been enough for a great read, Marsha, powered by her many experiences, also poses some very pertinent questions that surely need our collective attention:

The plight of the elderly, the medical system, as a whole, which treats the elderly as disposable.
How we, as a community, are still too traumatized by COVID and are afraid to have conversations about it and how that affects all of us, one way or the other.

While we don't really like thinking about and talking about old-age and death, these are but inevitabilities we need, as a society, to think and act upon, before we, ourselves, are rendered unwanted and expendable by the existing system.

I may not be able to convince you, but Marsha Gray surely can.
If nothing, you will find a good friend in the form of a book and find yourself a little bit less lonely in your battle against grief, loss, trauma and the COVID experience.

A memoir about the effects of Covid and how it impacted the elderly and the relationship between a mother and a daughter.

For the most part I enjoyed traveling the healing journey with the author. I found parts of it relatable and heart moving. At other times I found the journey to be repetitive and a bit whiny. Covid was so hard for so many people and so many things were not fair. The truth is it was a new experience for everyone— even those on the front lines. I think people tend to forget that doctors and nurses are human too and navigating something they have never had to navigate before. Sometimes grace needs to be given.

I hope that the writer was able to achieve some healing as she put pen to paper as it seemed as though the book was written more so for her own healing than to help others heal too.

Thank you NetGalley and Camille Campins-Adams, Forefront Books for allowing me to read this advanced. I have voluntarily read and reviewed it. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This memoir is focused on the author’s experiences and grief during her mother’s downhill health slide and eventual death from COVID in 2020. The book alternates between an account of her mother’s final weeks, treatment of the elderly in the US, the author’s grief and some details about her mother’s life.
I see this book as a sort of therapy process that the author used to deal with her grief, almost like a personal journal. I’m all for this method of working through grief and I’m sure the author found it helpful. I was really looking for a personal account of what it was like to watch a loved one die from COVID as I think there are still many people in the US who don’t take the disease seriously. There was definitely some of this content that I was looking for included in this book but the alternating back and forth with the other topics I mentioned above made the book choppy and disjointed. I also found the content really repetitive - when she switched topics, she basically repeated herself over and over and this made the flow of the book not work. It seemed like she didn’t have enough content for a complete book so just repeated things. So, while the book was disappointing and fell flat for me, I hope the author gained some comfort from writing it.

'Grief and Grit(s)' by Marsha Gray Hill touched me on so many levels. I'm not sure that any American can say they haven't been changed by Covid and Ms. Hill bears testament to much of the pain and subsequent scars. I am a Health Care Professional who cared for less seriously ill Covid patients yet I was haunted by the media images of what was happening as well as by my own imagination. I cannot fathom the pain that Ms. Hill experienced watching her mother suffer, being torn as to the right choices to make and facing the reality that her mother, Adaline Gray, would never be a priority for care due to her comorbidities and age. I am a planner like Ms. Hill, though not to the degree she was, but I understand that she is unable to get past her image of what her mother's passing and remembrance ceremony would look like. I am also a nurturer at heart so I understand Adaline Gray's selflessness and can only imagine her demented confusion and fear in her hour of need. However, the biggest message I will remember from this book is not to wait until I'm 'wishing for more time' to commit to print the random stories that are the patchwork of who I am. Marsha Hill also reaffirmed my belief that blood and spirit family are one of life's few constants and definitely worthy of the very best my nurturing soul has to give. Thanks to Marsha Hill, BookishFirst, NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for getting a digital ARC in my hands. I give the book four stars and I recommend it to anyone who has experienced the last four years and mourned the loss of any amount of interpersonal interaction due to Covid restrictions. The anger, the fear, the angst of covid is well depicted in this book as is the heartbreak of the overlooked helpless senior, the fickleness of grief and the grit of the Gray family.

This is certainly a story that needs to be told and there are thousands very similar to it. Working in the medical field during and after the COVID pandemic I’ve seen all too many. I found the author needlessly repetitive, often re-stating or copying nearly exact sentences just a few pages or paragraphs apart. I felt like she was trying to convince us and maybe herself of how she felt by repeating it several times. I was turned off by the statement that she and her husband had donated a large amount to a local hospital wing and yet her mother couldn’t get a bed. From then on I knew this was coming from a place of extreme privilege. The book became less and less about her mother and more the series of perceived slights and inconveniences that had befallen the author. Even making her sister’s reaction to their mother’s death about her, sure to point out all that she had done for her mother, multiple times. There are many valid points about American healthcare, elder culture, family values and grief, sadly all those points are lost swimming in the mire of the author’s martyrdom, ego, and privilege.

Thanks to NetGalley and Forefront Books for the ARC of this book. This is my honest review.

What a powerful and interesting read. I never thought about many of the elements that are raised in this book. To that end, I am very grateful for the opportunity to read this one. Thank you publisher!

This is an amazing book. It is timely and a deep study of love, loss, grief, and family dynamics. The author shares her journey of saying goodbye to her mother during the recent pandemic. It explores the topic of grief in all its forms and serves as a personal guidebook. It deals with the rawness of the passing of those we treasure. I must admit this book hit close to home to me as I recently suffered a loss of my own. This made me feel that I am not alone and I sincerely thank Marsha Gray Hill for opening up her pain for all of us. It has helped me as I go through these difficult days. I highly recommend this book to anyone suffering loss. This book took a lot of courage to write. It deals so much with how we treat the elderly in our society and asks each of us to do something in our own life to help others experience loss in a kinder, gentler way. All I can say is thank you! This is a book I really needed to read.

I wish to thank NetGalley and Camille Campins-Adams, Forefront Books for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book. I have voluntarily read and reviewed it. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Grief and Grit(s) is the story of how Marsha Gray Hill cared for her mother and mourned her death. It tackled many topics that are not talked about enough in today's society like grief. This book opened my eyes to the process of moving forward after losing a loved one. In many ways, it has shown me what it truly means to grieve. The book was written so well and tackled the topic of grief straight on. It was unapologetically honest and open and wonderful. The undefined process of moving forward after the death of a loved one is something the author explored well in this book. It is an eye opener and a must read for anyone in need of comfort as they grieve. If there is a book you must read this year, it is this book.