Review by Booklist Review
Gilbert had long been addicted to love and sex, manifesting "as a sincere yet deeply misguided belief that somebody outside of myself will miraculously be able to heal me on the inside." After the massive success of Eat, Pray, Love (2006), she became even more of a people-pleaser and rescuer, finding a project in her hairdresser, Rayya. A charismatic recovering drug addict, Rayya radiates strength and confidence, and Gilbert soon finds herself hopelessly drawn into her life. As their relationship grows, Gilbert happily supports Rayya emotionally and financially. And then Rayya is stricken with terminal cancer. Turning back to drugs to relieve her pain, Rayya relapses, and Gilbert becomes a codependent and addicted wreck. Five years after Rayya's death, Gilbert rips open her life to share all the painful moments and grief in prose, poetry, and drawings in a story of despair and courage that's difficult to read and must have been extremely difficult to write. Gilbert doesn't gloss over grim details, excruciating choices, or the long road back to wellness fueled by spiritual encounters and twelve-step programs. Fans of her more lighthearted memoir and novels may be shocked by this book's intensity, but it's a brave story with an ultimately hopeful outcome. Anyone who has faced addiction--or loved someone who has--will recognize and be moved by Gilbert's journey.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Gilbert is one of our bona fide literary superstars, and her announcement of this tell-all grief memoir was met with enormous enthusiasm.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestseller Gilbert (City of Girls) discusses in this inspiring account how she struggled through financial hazards, obsessive love affairs, and emotional land mines on her way to "a healthy relationship with myself" after a tumultuous romance. Gilbert first met Rayya Elias in 2000, when Elias began cutting Gilbert's hair just before the author grew disenchanted with her first marriage. The pair gradually evolved from casual friends to soulmates, with Gilbert ending her second marriage to start a relationship with Elias in the 2010s after Elias received a terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis. After the couple consummated their attraction, both fell deeper into addiction--Gilbert to love and sex, Elias to alcohol and drugs. After Elias died in 2018, Gilbert examined her addictions and arrived at a spiritual awakening ("I gave my life to God then, the way I used to give it to strangers"). Gilbert achieves her signature intimacy through a bluntly confessional tone ("Sex has always been the fastest and most direct way for me to feel thoroughly chosen") and an admirable ability to stare darkness in the face without losing hope. Readers struggling with addiction or seeking a path through heartbreak will find invaluable wisdom in these pages. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In Gilbert's (City of Girls) emotional new memoir/self-help book, the author explores her own addiction to love and sex and details the traumatic death of her partner, Rayya Elias, from pancreatic and liver cancer in 2018. Gilbert describes how her addiction has shaped much of her life and how her relationship with Rayya and her death finally propelled Gilbert to seek help and attempt to change her ways. Love and sex addiction, particularly in women, is not commonly discussed, and Gilbert handles the topic deftly. Her story of her relationship with Rayya and their brief time together is a challenging one, and Gilbert's pain is palpable. She intersperses poems and drawings from the journals that she kept before and during the writing of this book, which offer thought-provoking breaks from the heavy content. VERDICT Gilbert is a beloved and deeply talented writer, and many audiences will want to pick up her motivational new book, though the content is very personal and may not appeal to every self-help reader.--Elizabeth Walline
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The author of the world's most famous memoir returns to the form to tell the story of a great love. "This book--its stories, prayers, poems, journal entries, photos, and drawings--is my very best effort to tell the truth about what happened between me and Rayya Elias--our friendship, our romance, our beauty, rage, and pain. It tells the story of Rayya's addiction, her relapse, and her death. It also tells the story of my own addiction and my eventual surrender into recovery." Gilbert (Eat Pray Love,City of Girls, etc.) brings her beloved Rayya vibrantly to life on the page, showing how and why the woman she met in 2002 as a hairdresser in the East Village was "a legend to all who knew her." When Rayya was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2016, Gilbert ended her marriage (which by then had become a distant second fiddle to the relationship with Rayya), and the two became lovers. There was a good part, and then a very bad part in the months leading up to Rayya's death in 2018. The book also follows the story of Gilbert's subsequent recovery from sex and love addiction through devoted adherence to a 12-step program. Since she does not "have the heart to write out the excruciating details of the binge that I went on" after Rayya died, citing concern for the privacy of others, she focuses instead on the spiritual and emotional progress she has finally been able to achieve, documented in earnest poems and winsome doodles as well as well-written anecdotes. "Readers of my earlier work may remember that I reached nearly this same level of peace and tranquility back when I was in India, in the middle of myEat Pray Love travels, after months of disciplined prayer, meditation, and retreat." The difference this time, she says, is that she has the support she needs not to "drive my life off a cliff all over again." A worthy addition to the literature of addiction and recovery, charming and harrowing by turns. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
