The Remarriage Blueprint: How Remarried Couples and Their Families Succeed or Fail

With the alarming statistic in mind that 70-80% of second marriages fail, Maggie Scarf examines the dynamic that remarriages face in comparison to first-time marriages. Scarf lays out the blueprint for a remarriage and identifies five main issues that most remarriages encounter at some point. According to Scarf, the interviews and stories she shares from couples facing these five hurdles aim to help those in remarriages or those contemplating a remarriage to navigate the difficult environment.

While The Remarriage Blueprint: How Remarried Couples and Their Families Succeed or Fail has noble intentions, it is not at all helpful for those facing a remarriage and I doubt it would be helpful for those already in one. The interviews Scarf shares are all, with one exception, negative. There are no tools offered for the reader to navigate the tricky waters of remarriage outside of some brief advice on how to handle money conversations. The overwhelming negativity of the book emotionally chews up the reader. More destructively, the reader is left questioning why anyone would enter into a remarriage when there is so much stacked against a remarriage’s success and when there are no tools offered to overcome those odds.