Reviews

Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage by Heather Havrilesky

zainab224's review

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1.0

I respect her honesty I guess, but she's completely insufferable. I felt bad for her husband most of the time.

margaretmechinus's review

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4.0

I really loved this book. I’m giving it only four stars bc of chapter 16- Crushed, in which she fantasizes  about having an affair with a fellow author. She also uses a lot of the F-word. That chapter could have been left out. It made me like her a little less, although her honesty has to be admired. 

I don’t think I could be her friend, and I don’t think she would want me as her friend. She is too neurotic for me and I am too much like her husband, Bill, who she loves but who she also refers to as not having a frontal lobe. But her writing is honest and funny and most of the time she is making fun of and owning up to her own faults. 

When she met her future husband nieces and they called her “Aunt.” She says she was not ready for that heavy responsibility. She writes, “my heart was two sizes too small.”  But this is a book about how a selfish, narcotic, neurotic heart can grow, through marriage, motherhood, and suburbia. 

wrentheblurry's review

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4.0

52% read on Kindle, finished (MUCH more quickly) by listening to the very well done audiobook.

jamesmata's review

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DNF 4% so grating

shaylabee's review

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4.0

Heather Havrilesky has been married long enough to know that Foreverland sometimes feels less like a sweet ride through the Tunnel of Love and more like a few go-rounds on a ghastly roller coaster designed to make you hurl.

I wrote a longer review but the TL;DR is this: This is a deeply honest book about a subject about which many are not willing to be honest — with themselves, or with others. You’re either going to love it or hate it, but it will make you feel something.

I found it to be a refreshing and hilarious read, though it did seem to be tied up a little too neatly in the end.

cemills's review

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2.0

I mean I guess this was okay to read but it was full of a lot of...unnecessary memoirs? For lack of a better word. And it didn't really teach me anything interesting about marriage? Just talked about the authors own marriage. And even then, only from her point of view. I dont think I will be reading anything else from Heather Havrilesky; I didn't really like her voice.

smalltownbookmom's review

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4.0

A funny, honest and utterly relatable memoir about falling in love, being a good partner, having children and how it takes a lot of work to not want to strangle your partner (or kids) some days. I didn't know anything about this author before picking up the book but it was pure delight! Easy to listen to, I found myself laughing out loud multiple times. The last part of the book about life during the initial months of the pandemic and discovering she might have breast cancer were particularly poignant and moving. Definitely recommended, especially on audio read by the author.

meganihauck's review

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Entertaining, but just not my cup of tea.

wesleyboy's review

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4.0

Really great honest read about marriage and having kids. Yeah, it gets a little harsh at times in tone, but everyone does who’s been married for long enough.
The end kinda just *plops* though. There was this undercurrent she kept coming back to of, “but I had no idea what was to come…” that doesn’t feel like it truly pays off.

*Spoiler alert*

It’s a cancer scare. A scare, not a diagnosis. I’m not saying that isn’t scary, I’m just saying it’s not a thing you should foreshadow throughout your entire book. It felt, to me, a bit anticlimactic.

Still a good read, just disappointed by the ending. Kinda felt like the book was due and she just went, “and that’s the waaaaaay it goes!”

popelc6's review

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It's not marriage that's tedious - it's the author. Geez. What a miserable human.