Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions about Dead Bodies

This was a strangely relaxing read about a topic that's not often brought up in casual spaces. Doughty approaches the topic of death in a humorous, yet educational manner. The book is divided into thirty-ish bite-sized sections that can be read (or listened to) at your own pace. Doughty does not overload the reader with tons of information. Instead, she eases readers into anecdotes or aptly-timed jokes before displaying the truths, myths, and falsehoods around death and dead bodies. The audiobook is just as good, and being narrated by Doughty herself, you feel like you're chatting with a quirky friend who also just happens to be a mortician.

While the book is a good way to break the ice around talking about death, there are some sections in the book that, in my opinion, don't stick out as well as other chapters. For example, there is a chapter on Viking deaths that, while interesting from a historical standpoint, feel like it'd appeal to a handful of readers. The chapter itself isn't bad, but it's such a specific topic for a specific reader. I suppose I expected a more general approach throughout the book, but that may just be me.

I do recommend this book to anyone who's interested in death, processes for morticians, funeral homes, the transformation of the body after death, etc. The topic may be touchy for some and weird to others, but it is one of the few things that connects all of humanity. And who knows, you may come away from it being just a little bit more comfortable with death.