Often, the things that come in the smallest packages pack the biggest punch. Marion Winik’s Highs in the Low Fifties is small in size, but by the time you finish reading it, you’ve been moved and changed. You’ve laughed, cried and shaken your head innumerable times as you identify pieces of your own life in hers.

Winik, a longtime NPR commentator, is the author of several other nonfiction books that offer her unique and often hilarious take on being single and of middle age in today’s chaotic world. In Highs in the Low Fifties, she looks unflinchingly at her own life, and her heartbreaking divorce, as she looks for love all over again, often in the wrong places and with the wrong men. But her mistakes are our blessings in this punchy and straightforward book. Winik hides little, and we as a result look at our own lives a little differently.

Along her road to recovery from her divorce from the man she thought for sure was her soul mate, Winik takes us on an online and offline dating tour de force, as she comes to grips with raising a young daughter alone, a devastating illness she must get through, and some realizations about life and love that we can all relate to, male or female, young or old.

I must confess, I had never heard of Marion Winik until this book crossed my desk, and lemme tell ya, it crossed my desk at just the right time in my life. But I now count myself among her devoted followers and hope to read all of her books, including The Lunch-Box Chronicles and First Comes Love.