Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give

It's a book filled with marriage advice - which clearly dooms this book to a purgatory of well-intentioned bromides and Pinterest worthy quotes suitable for placement over a picture of a sun dappled tropical beach. But Ada Calhoun is far smarter and way more real-talk than that.

Her advice on not getting divorced? Don't get divorced. The idea you'd take a bullet for your husband or wife - that bullet is infidelity. No easy advice here - and she backs it up with candid vulnerability and a courageous willingness to share her own experiences.

It's an antidote to the heartfelt admissions couples make at weddings. Ludicrous bargains, impossible standards and smaltzy analogies. When she shares some hard won advice that the first 20 years are the hardest, she's not kidding. She's smart, funny and willing to throw open the doors of her marriage and let us snoop around inside without having tidied everything up first. Hers is messy, chaotic, broken in places, hopelessly mundane in others but still home.