The founder of the Book Hook Online site, J K Mullins, reviews Grace Main’s book, Estranged Lives, after purchasing it on Amazon and reading it in December 2025.
The feelings of “estrangement” and how to deal with them based on real personal experience.
Not being a parent myself I found that I was still able to relate to this book, having been through divorce during COVID and experiencing various setbacks with other relationships as I tried to re-invent myself.
Grace is estranged from her son for reasons that are not altogether clear. In the circumstance’s Grace identifies the different emotional stages that the estrangement inflicts on her and the depth of those emotions. More importantly Grace suggests how to deal with them based on her own raw experience.
It is a brave subject to address and important one especially coming from the experience of a down-to-earth, working mother. Grace’s life is not one lived under the spot light that can be part of fame and fortune. Also she does not claim to be a guru on human emotions. This make the decision to tell her story all the more admirable because it is a deeply personal subject to her.
Grace describes how she chose to create her own life whilst coming to terms with estrangement and how she hopes for reconciliation without letting that hope consume her in a negative manner. She notes, “..even in the darkest of times there is always a glimmer of hope. If we can envision it, we can achieve it;” and later, “Remember, it’s worse to hold on to a broken heart and be dragged by it, than to let it go.
