Phil Williams

Phil Williams has lived enough lives for several memoirs: a pastor’s son who set a putt-putt course on fire as a boy and threw a keg party in the parsonage as a teen; perhaps the smallest, slowest starting wide receiver in major college football history; an NFL agent entirely by accident; a husband who met his wife by shouting “Hey, what’s your name?” across a steamy parking lot. But the book he had to write came from the life no parent should know: the loss of his daughter to cancer — and the collapse, with her, of the once-unquestioned faith he’d been raised in.

F*ck You, God: One Man’s Evolution from Pursuit through Pain to Peace (2024) is exactly what its title promises: an unfiltered reckoning — rage, depression, resentment toward God and all — that slowly, honestly, transforms into something far more meaningful than the faith it replaced. Told with humour, warmth and devastating candour (and narrated by Phil himself in the audiobook), it has become a lifeline for grieving readers precisely because it refuses to tidy anything up. For anyone who has shaken a fist at heaven and wondered if they’re allowed to, Phil’s answer is the whole book: yes — and it can be the beginning, not the end, of peace.