7 Books to Read With a Broken Heart

To Help You Realize: Believe It or Not, It Could Have Been Worse

Reading this engrossing tale of a marital train wreck—no, make that a marital mushroom cloud—you may have the same feeling of wanting to step in and do something that occurs when you watch the blonde in a horror movie decide to go check out that awful noise in the attic. For a Manhattan couples therapist with a Harvard degree and years of experience diagnosing faults in others' relationships, Grace Reinhart Sachs is the last to figure out that not only is her husband leaving her, but maybe, just maybe, he is connected to a gruesome murder in her son's rarefied school community. It can't help but occur to any reader who's been through a garden-variety, albeit anguishing breakup that at least the parting of ways didn't spawn a homicide investigation. And since this is more of a psychological novel than a procedural thriller, Korelitz offers plenty to ponder about the way the ending of any partnership can set you willy-nilly on new roads both terrible and, truly, all for the best.