Reviews with content warning for Death - Everything I Know about Love: A Memoir

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Everything I Know about Love: A Memoir by Dolly Alderton

199 reviews

joensign's review against another edition

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funny hopeful reflective slow-paced

3.0

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arthurjentges04's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing sad medium-paced

4.0

this book is incredibly well written and the audiobook well narrated. dolly alderton knows her shit and how to articulate herself. i found this book to be incredibly relatable for the most part (not so much the turning 30/existential crisis part, because i’m 19 and barely and adult lol, but the rest). this book speaks about societal pressures, romance, eating disorders, unhealthy coping through drug and alcohol abuse, growing into adulthood and out of your childhood, the importance of platonic love(!!!), loss and grief, letting go and accepting and sooo much more. no matter your age, this book has something important to say to you and you have something valuable to learn from it.

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seasonofreads's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing sad fast-paced

5.0

As someone on the cusp of turning 30, this book reached deep inside me and pulled out some much needed nostalgia and epiphanies about the last decade. Dolly is funny and smart, daring and brave, full of good advice and searing insights, and honest about her flaws in a way that is inspiring. You don’t have to be a fabulous blond party girl to get where she is coming from. You only need to be a woman who is living through their 20s and 30s to feel seen by this book. I’d venture to say women of all ages would feel seen, but I’m not in my further decades yet. Dolly’s story telling is vivid and romantic and so personal that you will hear her voice in your head even after you close the book. I loved it every minute of this memoir of sorts. I will be inhaling her next book asap! I highly recommend this book to one and all.

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jeimy's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

4.0

y’all. this book put me THROUGH it. 😩

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

📝 review:

so here goes—i really struggled to get through the first part of this book.

the first 30% of dolly’s memoir was mostly about her relationship with alcohol and going out as much as possible, which was really hard for me to read given that it felt repetitive and unrelatable to me.

at the very least it should have started with a heavy content warning.

then the next 10% or so was all about how she hated her best friend’s first serious partner, which just felt like mad hater-ade! i honestly found myself wondering how they’re still friends after all the evil eye that was thrown, lol.

BUT, thankfully, the latter half of this book touched me so so deeply. (and now i see the hype!) reading this alongside all about love really made me think deeply about love as a theoretical concept, and how to pour deeply into all of my relationships—not just my romantic one. shout out to all my girlfriends & sisters who i adore more than life itself.

🔖 read this if you like:

raw, witty, funny writing
loving on your girlfriends
chapters interspersed with recipes, lists, short stories
a good cry

💭 my fave quotes:

“There isn’t a pebble on the beach of my history that she has left unturned. She knows where to find everything in me and I know where all her stuff is too. She is, in short, my best friend.”

“You were made so that someone could love you. Let them love you.”

“I thought about how we’d known each other for twenty years and how, in all that time, I’d never got bored of her. I thought of how I’d only fallen more and more in love with her the older we grew and the more experiences we shared.”

“Life is a wonderful, mesmerizing, magical, fun, silly thing. And humans are astounding. We all know we’re going to die, and yet we still live. We shout and curse and care when the full bin bag breaks, yet with every minute that passes we edge closer to the end. We marvel at a nectarine sunset over the M25 or the smell of a baby’s head or the efficiency of flat-pack furniture, even though we know that everyone we love will cease to exist one day. I don’t know how we do it.”

from the acknowledgements:

“And, finally, thank you to Farly, without whose unwavering cheering and championing I would not have written this book. You are—you always will be—my favorite love story.”

gah, i’m in my feels all over again.

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melyj's review against another edition

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funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

5.0

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beanie_bob's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful reflective medium-paced

4.25

I’m thoroughly impressed with how organically the narrative grew with Dolly as she took us through her journey of teenager to twenty-something to thirty. It feels like we spend so long in the drunken, risky, exciting, enviable, sad era of her twenties but before I knew it she was growing up.

Sometimes when I hear myself talk I think ‘wow, I sound so much older than I feel’. I feel 15 all the time. I feel unreal and babyish and shrunk down. And then I’ll have something to say about relationships or expectations or communication, and I’ll be a little bewildered that I have anything ‘grown up’ to say at all.

Last year I must have picked up on the ripple effect of this book; girls online everywhere were talking about girlhood, about the vitality and richness of their female friendships. This book had been making the rounds. I cannot argue with Dolly; the greatest love I’ve ever had has been with my friends.

I can understand how someone could get tired of this book and DNF around 25%. It’s all very white, middle-class, and British. I don’t know how well her party girl bit would have been received otherwise. But I think there is an audience for this.

I’m reminded a lot of Fleabag, but less sad. And Bridget Jone’s Diary. Give this a go if you like either of those.

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cassidy_rain's review

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emotional funny hopeful medium-paced

5.0

“Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learned in my long-term friendships with women.”

Yep, I absolutely loved it. This will make you laugh, cry, and feel nostalgic in the best possible way. Dolly has a way of writing that makes you feel like her best friend; like you were involved in her memories and stories she’s telling. It almost feels like reading a diary. I love the lists and recipes added in between chapters. It’s witty and fun and raw. Being in my late twenties I could definitely relate to this and it really got me in my feels honestly.

This is a memoir about love, yes. But also about friendship, growing up, finding yourself, and really just life in general. It touches on all kinds of love: romantic, familial, platonic, and self-love. I love that she puts so much emphasis on platonic love throughout the story. She always finds a way to tie everything back into the love she has for her friends. And what a fun group of women she has surrounded herself with. I loved reading about her personal growth and realizations as the book went on as well.

I’ve heard good things about the audiobook so decided to give it a try on a recent roadtrip (I don’t typically listen to audiobooks). It is narrated by the author. If you like audiobooks I think you’d like this! I would have personally enjoyed it more if I read a physical copy. There’s lots of characters and the switching ages/timelines between stories/chapters was a little confusing to me while listening. I also found the beginning a bit slow, but I think this was mainly due to me not reading it in my preferred format. It definitely picked up a lot as it progressed.

I think this book is gonna stick with me for a long time.

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