Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton [Book Review]

I don’t think I’ve ever been so conflicted by a book in my life! I felt like the second half was a completely different book to the first half.

When I started reading this, I had such high expectations, and the beginning of the book completely let me down. I really did not like it. But I stuck with it, knowing there had to be something good (why else would it have such a high rating?), and found that I really enjoyed the second half.

So, here is a copy of my rambles. It starts off bad and ends somewhere kind of good. Tag along for the ride.

 

Quick Summary

For those of you who don’t know this book, it is a memoir by journalist Dolly Alderton about her trials and tribulations with love. It starts with stories from her childhood and university days, leading into her twenties – moving out, dates, friends, the lot.

It touches on themes of: longing to be an adult, long-term friendships, dating, crazy nights-out, break-ups, feeling as though you’re falling behind, and ultimately growing up and realising what it is like to overcome all of those struggles, as well as learning to understand your own self.

 

 

Initial Thoughts

I’m just over 100 pages in and I really want to love this book but I am really not that bothered with it! I don’t know anything about the author, but her younger self I really don’t like – she’s self-absorbed, she takes no personal responsibility, and she drinks and takes drugs far too often. And, to be honest, it was easy to imagine her character, after having seen a lot of people like this during my own time at university, but it didn’t make it any more enjoyable.

The thing with drunk stories is: they’re funny, but only when you know the person who is telling them. And all I felt when I was reading the stories was: absolutely nothing. I wasn’t made to feel like I was talking to a dear friend, so I just didn’t really have any strong feelings towards anything that was happening. It felt like the stories that people tell you to show off, because they think they sound “cool”, but, if anything, I just felt kind of sorry for her.

The only part so far that I found interesting was when Dolly was talking about real emotions, about her struggle with food and how it made her feel. The rest seems a bit try-hard and I didn’t find it particularly funny either.

 

Middle-of-the-book Thoughts

Since the story of Dolly’s trip to New York, my feelings of the book drastically changed. She started to delve into a more mature reflection on her life and I found this a lot more interesting. The story about Florence was heart-breaking and beautiful, especially ending with Dolly’s closeness to her best friend Farly, and I found her reflections on her time with a therapist very interesting, and more relatable through her journey to self-development.

 

Final Thoughts

I finally understand why people like this book. It is all about the journey from self-hatred to self-love, from boy longing to the acceptance of being single. It is a reminder that friends matter, and in some ways even more so than any relationship. However, I feel like I got more out of it in the last 50 pages than in the entire thing. And that’s disappointing.

In the final moments of the book there were so many heart-warming moments. Moments I was nodding along furiously with because I agreed so much, and it is empowering to read about a woman who has gone through so much to reach such an enlightening epiphany. And, in some ways, the beginning of the book was necessary to make this transformation evident. I suppose me hating the beginning of the book parallels the way Dolly didn’t really like herself back then – in that way, it is clever.

 

I’ve honestly never read a book that threw me from one extreme to the other so quickly, and it’s something that makes rating a book impossible. But I will have to go with this, for the book itself was flawed, but I got something out of it:

 

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️  out of 5

I’d like to read this book again when I reach thirty, or even in a few years time. I think it’s one of those books that perhaps you relate with differently at different times in your life.

 

 

Have you read Everything I Know About Love?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

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