In Brief
- Narration: Jennifer Pickens gives Clover a controlled, unhurried register that reads as quiet competence rather than sentimentality.
- Themes: Death and mortality, unlived life and regret, unlikely friendship across generations
- Mood: Tender and reflective, grief handled with warmth rather than gloom
- Verdict: A genuinely fresh take on grief-adjacent women's fiction, best suited to listeners who do not need a fast plot to stay invested.
Clover Brooks keeps three notebooks by her bedside, each one labeled in the same careful hand: ADVICE, CONFESSIONS, REGRETS. As a death doula working in New York City, she has spent years sitting with strangers in their final days, collecting their last words the way other people collect photographs. The Collected Regrets of Clover audiobook opens inside that quiet, unusual profession before pulling Clover out of it entirely, when a dying client named Claudia hands her an old love letter, a road map, and the first real prompt she has had in years to examine her own unlived life.
The Review
Mikki Brammer, a former journalist who has also trained as a death doula herself, writes Clover's professional competence with real specificity rather than the soft-focus treatment death and dying often get in commercial fiction. The notebook structure, ADVICE, CONFESSIONS, REGRETS, gives the book a tidy organizing device that keeps what could be a meandering premise moving with purpose, and it lets Brammer dole out other people's stories in controlled doses between the chapters that belong to Clover herself.
Where the book shifts gears is Claudia, whose life has apparently been everything Clover's has not: bold, chance-taking, occasionally reckless. Claudia's single regret becomes Clover's assignment, and the road trip that follows functions as both a mystery and a mirror, forcing a woman who has organized her entire adult life around other people's endings to finally reckon with her own middle.
This is Brammer's debut novel, published by Penguin in 2023, and the blurbs attached to it, from KJ Dell'Antonia and Ruth Hogan, place it firmly alongside gently comic, big-hearted contemporary fiction about unconventional women finding their footing later than expected. That comp-title company is a fair signal of tone: readers who want plot mechanics over character interiority should adjust expectations accordingly.
The three notebooks are not redundant categories. Advice captures what dying people want the living to know going forward; confessions holds what they need to admit before they can rest; regrets is the sharpest of the three, the specific paths not taken. Keeping them separate rather than folding everything into one running list is a small structural choice that pays off, letting Brammer draw a clear line between guidance offered outward and reckoning turned inward.
Why Listen to The Collected Regrets of Clover
Reviewers consistently describe the book as an emotional pendulum. One called it 'equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming,' and that balance seems to be Brammer's real skill: Clover moves through hospice rooms with total ease but grows visibly uncertain the moment the subject turns to her own romantic life, a sharper and more specific character contradiction than the average grief-adjacent women's fiction offers.
A sharp irony surfaces here that one reviewer flagged directly: despite collecting a notebook full of dying strangers' hard-won wisdom, Clover does not actually follow much of that advice in her own life, at least not until Claudia forces the issue. An omniscient, advice-dispensing protagonist would be far less interesting than one who can recognize good counsel and still fail to apply it to herself, and Brammer leans into that gap rather than smoothing it over.
Jennifer Pickens narrates with a controlled, unhurried register that suits Clover exactly, letting her professional competence read as a kind of armor rather than a quirky character trait. That distinction matters for a book spending this much time in hospice settings; an overly warm or sentimental narration choice could easily tip the material into melodrama, and Pickens does not seem to make that mistake based on how the performance comes across.
One reviewer titled their response around the idea that this could be an 'eye opening, game changing read, if you allow it to be,' a framing that captures something true about the book's design: it works best for listeners willing to sit with its slower, reflective passages rather than rushing toward plot resolution. The synopsis itself opens on a short verse urging the reader to 'put your heart out there,' 'take chances,' 'make mistakes,' which functions less as decoration than as the book's actual thesis statement.
The Caveats
One reviewer noted feeling sad when the book ended, wishing it had lingered longer on where its characters ended up, a fair signal that the ending arrives on the brisker side relative to the emotional investment the book asks for along the way. Listeners who prefer a slow, fully resolved denouement should know that going in.
This is squarely literary women's fiction built around mortality, not a plot-driven thriller, despite the momentum the road trip section provides. The blurbs on file, comparing it to The Authenticity Project and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, are a reasonably accurate signal of pace and tone: character-first, gently paced, with humor used to offset rather than undercut the heavier material.
Because Clover's job puts her in contact with a steady rotation of dying clients beyond just Claudia, the book has to juggle several smaller, self-contained stories inside the larger narrative. That structure pays off in texture and variety, but listeners expecting a single tightly focused plot rather than an episodic accumulation of lives and last words should know the format going in.
Should You Listen to The Collected Regrets of Clover?
This suits listeners who enjoyed Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine or similar character studies, or anyone drawn to death-positive nonfiction who wants to see similar themes handled through fiction instead. The death doula premise is genuinely fresh material for the genre rather than a repackaged grief-memoir angle.
It is a weaker fit for listeners who want a fast plot or a tidy, extended resolution, given the reviewer feedback about the ending's pace. Anyone allergic to hospice and end-of-life settings as a backdrop, even handled with warmth rather than gloom, should also approach with that in mind before starting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Collected Regrets of Clover audiobook a sad story, or does it stay hopeful?
It is genuinely both. Reviewers describe it as equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming, balancing hospice-setting grief with warmth, humor, and Clover's own unexpected road trip toward hope.
Is the ending of this audiobook satisfying, or does it feel rushed?
At least one reviewer wished the book had lingered longer on where its characters ended up, so listeners wanting a slow, fully resolved denouement should know the ending arrives on the brisker side.
