Everything I Know About Love

I thought about picking a light read for a flight and taking it with me. I was excited at the idea of enjoying a few pleasant hours, but the result was a complete disaster. The book was so boring that the journey felt like it lasted a lifetime. Despite how terrible the book was, I kept reading just to avoid boredom and because I had already bought it. Turns out, finding a good book can sometimes be just as challenging as the journey itself.

Everything I Know About Love, with quite a long title, is actually Dolly Alderton’s memoir. I thought her life would be wild and exciting, but I had a hard time finding anything relatable. In most of her stories about love, I felt she was in the wrong. Still, I can’t deny there were a few parts that managed to make me smile. However, reading the memoirs of someone I found both unsuccessful in friendships and dating—someone I’d say “thankfully not in my life”—completely drained my energy. The “messy girl aesthetic,” Kesha-style from the 2010s, filled with drugs, alcohol, and one-night stands, feels both tiresome and depressing to me. It takes the author quite a while to realize her mental health is deteriorating (though I had already diagnosed the need for therapy by page 10).

This book, which lacks a central theme, can be briefly summarized as Dolly’s deep friendship bond with her best friend and her inability to form romantic relationships due to feelings of worthlessness.When you put it like that, you might see the author as someone you meet often in daily life or maybe even relate to her, but I hope you don’t. Reading about someone who envies her friend’s happiness, harms herself, and fails in relationships, letting others use her body, was an experience I don’t want to go through again. I know, this sounds a bit too critical. Maybe it’s because I got too excited from seeing the book praised so often and ended up disappointed. Either way, I don’t recommend this book to anyone. It doesn’t help with personal growth, and it’s not fun to read either. I’d suggest filling your time with books that actually make you feel good…