A Year of Us Review: One Question a Day, Tested at Our Kitchen Table

The first question in A Year of Us by Alicia Muñoz is something like, "What made you smile today?" and I almost laughed when Glen read it out loud. Thirty-one years married, two kids out of the house, and we were going to sit at our kitchen table and answer a question written for people who still have to learn each other's coffee orders. But we had just spent a Sunday evening having the same argument we have had since year twenty-four, the one about money and his long work weeks, and I was tired enough to try anything. So I bought the journal, and we agreed to do one question a night for a year. This is what that year actually looked like.

How I've Used It

We started on a Tuesday in early October, right after dinner. Glen poured the coffee, I opened to day one, and the question was about a small moment from the day. I answered first because I was the one who had bought the book, and my answer was about a former student who had emailed me out of nowhere. Then Glen answered, and his answer was about a job site that had finally stopped flooding. It took four minutes. We looked at each other like, that was it? It felt too easy.

The easy feeling did not last, and that is the honest part. Some nights the question landed flat. Some nights Glen came home from a fourteen-hour survey day and I could tell he was answering the question the way you answer a form, not the way you talk to your wife. On those nights I learned to close the journal and say, "We can do this one tomorrow." The book does not require a perfect session. It only requires that you show up, and showing up badly still counts.

We missed nights, too. Probably thirty or forty over the year, between a trip to see our daughter and a stretch in January when Glen's crew was working in the snow and he was home after ten. I thought about skipping those days permanently, but the book is forgiving. You can jump back in wherever you left off, and we did. By March the habit had become the point, not the questions.

What surprised me was how easy it was to come back after a gap. Because each page is dated rather than numbered in a way that makes you feel behind, we never had that sinking feeling of being twelve days late on homework. After our trip we simply opened to the right date and picked up, and Glen joked that the book did not seem to hold a grudge. I have abandoned plenty of well-meaning workbooks over the years precisely because missing a week made me feel like I had failed the whole thing. This one never did that to us.

One thing I did not expect was how much the physical book mattered. I had assumed we would treat it like a chore, something to get through before the news came on. Instead the journal lived on the corner of the table where the napkin holder used to be, and its presence became a small reminder all day long. When I cleared the dishes, I would see it and think, we have not done tonight's question yet. Glen said the same thing more than once. A prompt on a phone screen would have vanished into the same black hole as every other notification. A book on the table waited for us.

What the Questions Are Actually Like

Alicia Muñoz divides the year into themes, and the questions move from light to heavy and back again. Early on you get prompts about favorite memories and things you appreciate. Mid-year you get questions about conflict, about the stories you tell yourselves about each other, about what you were afraid to say. The last stretch circles back to gratitude and looking ahead. I appreciated that the heavy questions never arrived all at once. By the time we hit the hard ones, we had built a little muscle for talking.

The best questions were the ones that sounded simple and were not. One night the prompt was something like, "What do you wish I understood about your day?" Glen talked for ten minutes about what it is like to stand in a muddy field with a total station and know that a mistake means the whole foundation is off. I have heard versions of that complaint for thirty years, but I had never heard it that way, as a description of pressure instead of a complaint about his schedule. That single answer did more for my patience than any argument we ever had about his hours.

There were also questions that did nothing for us. A few felt aimed at couples in their twenties, questions about wild adventures and dream road trips. We are not those people anymore, and we said so out loud and laughed. The book does not mind. You can skip a question, answer it badly, or answer it as a joke. The structure holds up either way.

The middle of the year was where the book earned its keep. Around day one hundred and fifty, the questions started circling the same territory our arguments did: money, time, the way we each handle worry. I remember one prompt about what we argue about when we are not really arguing about that. Glen answered first, and he said our fights about his hours were really fights about whether I still mattered to him. I sat there with my coffee going cold. I had never heard him name it that plainly, and I told him so. The question did not fix anything that night. It just let us see the real topic on the table, and that was enough.

Glen talked for ten minutes about what it is like to stand in a muddy field and know a mistake means the whole foundation is off. I had never heard it that way before.

What Changed at Our Table

The biggest change was not the content of our conversations. It was the fact that we had them at all. Before the journal, our evenings went like this: dinner, dishes, Glen on the couch with his phone, me in the armchair with a book, and a running commentary about logistics. Who is picking up the car, when the gutters get cleaned, whether we should call the plumber. We were not fighting. We were just not talking.

The journal gave us a reason to sit down together after dinner, and that reason survived the year. We still do a version of it most nights, even now that the book is finished. Sometimes we use the last question we never answered. Sometimes Glen makes up his own. The ritual outlived the product, which is the best thing I can say about any tool like this.

The second change was smaller but just as real. I stopped assuming I knew what Glen was going to say. Thirty-one years is a long time, and I had built a very detailed model of my husband in my head. The journal kept showing me where that model was wrong. He is more worried about his father's health than I knew. He is prouder of the way our son handles money than he has ever said. He still thinks about the dog he grew up with. None of this was dramatic. All of it mattered.

There was one night in February I want to tell you about, because it is the clearest example of how the book worked for us. The question was about a time we felt proud of each other. I expected Glen to say something about our kids, and he did, but then he kept going. He talked about the year I went back to school for my library degree while working part time, and how he had watched me study at that same kitchen table until midnight for two straight years. I had no idea he had been keeping track of that. I cried a little, and he pretended not to notice. That is the whole review, right there. A question I would never have thought to ask, and an answer I needed to hear.

The Tradeoffs Nobody Mentions

I want to be fair about the parts that did not work. The journal is a talking book, not a writing book. Each page has a little space, but it is not a diary, and if you want a written record of your year together, this is not the tool. We kept no record at all. The conversations happened, and then they were gone, which is fine for us but might frustrate someone who wants to look back.

The questions also assume a certain kind of couple. They assume you have time, and privacy, and a partner who will sit still for four minutes. They assume a shared language and a shared table. If your life is loud, or your evenings are chaos, or one of you travels constantly, the daily rhythm will keep breaking. The book forgives that, but you have to be the one who keeps coming back to it.

And the results are slow. I want to be honest about that, because every review on the internet makes it sound like one question a day will transform your marriage in a month. It will not. For us, the first real shift came around the four-month mark, and it was not a breakthrough. It was just a Tuesday when Glen answered a question about worry without checking his phone first. That was the change. It was small, and it was real, and it was enough to keep us going.

I would also say this: the book cannot do the listening for you. On the nights when one of us answered the question while thinking about the dishes, the conversation went nowhere, no matter how good the prompt was. The journal opens the door, but you still have to put the phone in the other room and actually look at the person across the table. That part is on you, and it took us a few months to get consistently good at it.

Who This Is For

A Year of Us is for couples who are not in crisis but have drifted into parallel lives. If you and your partner talk mostly about schedules and chores, if you can go a whole evening without really looking at each other, if you remember that you used to be curious about each other and you miss that, this journal is a gentle way back. It is also good for newlyweds who want to build the habit early, and for long-distance couples who need a structured reason to call.

It is not a substitute for counseling. I am not a therapist, and I want to be clear about that. If you are dealing with betrayal, contempt, safety concerns, or serious mental health struggles, a question journal is not the tool you need. Please talk to a licensed professional. For the rest of us, the ones who just forgot how to talk, this book is a lovely place to start.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if you are looking for a fast fix. One question a day is slow, and the results are quiet. If you want a weekend retreat or a dramatic breakthrough, this will frustrate you. Skip it if one of you is not willing to sit down at all. The book only works if both people show up, and no amount of clever prompts can replace a partner who refuses to engage. And skip it if you already have a conversation ritual that works. You do not need this book. You need to keep doing what you are doing.