A raw intimate personal look at marriage.Entering this couples life their struggles was a difficult emotional read but a book that will keep you turning the pages. ( )

Loving story of a marriage, mental diagnosis, a suicide and the will of a wife to live. Emotional true story shared by a daughter of a husband’s love for his wife and family. Enjoyed the storytelling and heart wrenching honesty of the subject matter. Great book.

This is a love story of two stubborn individuals. In the story they choose each other again and again. For those unfamiliar with the disease this will be uplifting and hopeful. For those familiar, the book will likely disappoint in its brevity and lack of details, especially around the treatment(s) that had success. It is not intended as a scientific book and so we cannot fault the author too much. It does leave you wanting to know more and so the reader will seek out the other books in the series. I would have preferred them in one volume and tied together.

“An Impossible Wife: Why He Stayed” is part of a series of written by Rachael Siddoway, which tells the story of her mother’s mental illness and the impact on their family. Her writing lays bare the painful struggle of realizing someone you love has a mental illness and the difficult path it took for diagnosis and treatment. She paints a beautiful portrait of the strength of her father, of his deep and abiding love for his wife to work with her to get her treatment. Despite the havoc it wreaks within their lives he doesn’t give up on her and pushes her into taking responsibility of what her illness has done to the family. In that respect I would love liked to have heard from other family perspectives. I felt like it would have added some additional depth to shape the portrait of the family impact; to add to how her father drew upon them and helped them as well. This book serves well to convey how the chaos and uncertainty that accompanies life with mental illness. I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. ( )

An Impossible Wife: Why He Stayed is a heartbreaking telling of one woman’s severe mental illness told through the eyes of her husband, from their first meeting when he fell in love at first sight through many years of marriage, parenting, joy, and despair. The book is written by the couple’s daughter. I requested this book because I have a close family member with a mental illness they have been dealing with for most of their life. I found it wrenching to read. There are many parallels between Sonja and our family member but many differences also. Sonja, minus the mental illness, was a joyful and beautiful person. That beautiful person cannot be taken away but is excruciatingly masked by her increasing mental illness. Even at the start, this story takes place in the not too distant past and yet the stigma against mental illness of any kind is a factor, as it still is now. Sonja’s misdiagnosis, or rather lack of a full diagnosis, leaves her in acute distress for many years. Even when she is properly diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she is not as much better as hoped because there are so many medications, that work differently for different people. A person with mental illness is never completely out of the woods.
The author has written three more books about her mother’s mental illness. Two are co-written with her mother detailing the mother’s illness through her own eyes and a hopeful final book titled “A Possible Life: Creating a Life Worth Living”. The author has also written a book about her experiences growing up in a home devastated by mental illness. While some might see this as cashing in on the original book’s success, I believe it is a true wish to help others. The two authors are mental health advocates who have spoken with many news outlets, advocacy groups, governmental agencies, and non-profit organizations with the desire to create more help for mental illness as well as to decrease the stigma.
I received this ARC free of charge in exchange for my honest review. Thank you once again to LibraryThing as well as to the author and The Gap Press for this opportunity. ( )