Dancing at the Pity Party is a beautifully frank memoir for teens about grief in general and about the very specific grief the author experiences when she loses her mother while in college. Feder writes with such loving and sometimes funny detail about the specific and unexpected things she misses about her mom that it’s impossible not to feel the weight of this loss while reading. She also touches on the many ways this loss has affected her throughout her life and manages to balance the heaviness of the topic with a lighthearted delivery style and format. While this isn’t an easy read, it is an accessible, cathartic one both for those who have lost a parent and those seeking to understand.