What kind of a mother has the time to write a gushing love letter to her child every month? It's enough to make a normal mother feel like an abject failure. Can we take a book full of these letters seriously? When it's Heather Armstrong, we can.
Armstrong is no stranger to confession: Her website, dooce.com, gets more than 100,000 daily visitors, even giving us a new word ("dooced") for getting fired after complaining about your job on your blog. Her memoir, It Sucked... and Then I Cried, frankly revealed the battle with postpartum depression that landed her in the psych ward. After illuminating the truth about the loneliness of being a new mom, the upbeat Dear Daughter is a welcome change, and because Armstrong has been in the trenches we can take it as authentic. From another author, this book might give you a toothache--it's just so sweet--but you'll find yourself nodding along when Armstrong self-mockingly insists her offspring is the most exquisite child who ever lived, even when said daughter gleefully pees all over the couch. You'll laugh--and you'll cry, because you realize what Armstrong has been through to find this kind of joy in her daughter. Dear Daughter is a reminder of why anyone willingly becomes a parent... amid the heartbreak and sleepless nights, actively loving your child is a gift of unimaginable magnitude. --Natalie Papailiou, author of blog MILF: Mother I'd Like to Friend