The Catholic Girls Survival Guide for the Single Years

Emily Stimpson (now Emily Stimpson Chapman!) provides wide-ranging advice on everything from, "Should I buy a home as a single woman?" to how to be a good friend to married friends to how to dress in a way that's both attractive and modest. It's all given in bite-size pieces that you can read easily, but with plenty of further resources. I felt that the woman writing this book was talking to me honestly from her personal experience, yet she is also clearly well-read in theology and other subjects, too. She incorporates very Catholic advice as well as not-specifically-Catholic-but-still-good advice. She manages to hold in perfect tension the real and GOOD desire for marriage that most of us single women have and the real and GOOD sense that we should also learn to be happy with this part of our lives. It's not just a time of waiting, or shouldn't be. It's possible to be happy now as a single woman with all the perks that entails (changing up your budget to buy that $100 dress/toolbox/what-have-you without anyone else's input!) AND happy later if/when the husband and children come. Overall, I highly recommend this book for every unmarried woman as young as 17 or into her 30s. There was one tidbit of wisdom that has particularly stuck with me... but you'll have to read the book to find it yourself. :)