kkopacetic's review against another edition

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3.25


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kelly_e's review against another edition

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5.0

Title: From Here to the Great Unknown
Author: Lisa Marie Presley & Riley Keough
Genre: Memoir
Rating: 5.00
Pub Date: October 8, 2024

T H R E E • W O R D S

Unprecedented • Remarkable • Transcendent

📖 S Y N O P S I S

In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter to help finally finish her long-gestating memoir.

A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and grieved.

Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, laid in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran towards his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they shared in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.

To make her mother known.

💭 T H O U G H T S

I wouldn't consider myself an Elvis connoisseur and cannot say I knew much about Lisa Marie's life either, yet when I saw several glowing reviews for From Here to the Great Unknown, the memoir she started but that would end up being completed by her daughter and published posthumously, I knew I wanted to listen to it.

This is very special audiobook, one unlike any other I've listened to before. The combination of their voices - Julia Roberts reading Lisa's parts, Riley narrating her own additions, and sound clips of Lisa herself - was incredible. It's heartbreaking to think it took her dying for this book to come together in the manner it has.

Lisa's story is so deeply moving, a story marked by extreme fame and overwhelming grief. It adds valuable insight into many aspects of her personal life - her complicated relationship with Priscilla, the effect her father's death had at such a young age, her short-lived marriage to Michael Jackson, her journey in motherhood, her struggles with opioid addiction, and the death of her son.

From Here to the Great Unknown reads like a conversation between mother and daughter both attempting to heal all that has come before. It is deeply personal with a lot of unpacking, yet I am so grateful Riley was able to finish what her mother started. By doing so, she has paid homage to her mother's story and brought to light some of Lisa's biggest strengths. Listening to it was an emotional journey, worth every moment.

📚 R E A D • I F • Y O U • L I K E
• celebrity memoirs
• themes of grief
• mother/daughter relationships

⚠️ CW: death, death of parent, child death, grief, suicide, mental illness, addiction, drug use, drug abuse, alcohol, alcoholism, toxic relationship, suicidal thoughts, child abuse, pedophilia, domestic abuse, emotional abuse, sexual assault, adult/minor relationship, pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, cursing, infidelity, medical content, pandemic/epidemic

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"This was a huge lesson for me—the only way out is through. You must allow pain in to free yourself from it."

"Grief settles. It's not something you overcome. It's something that you live with. You adapt to it. Nothing about you is who you were. Nothing about how or what I used to think is important. The truth is that I don't remember who I was." 

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gkinnie's review against another edition

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4.25

Gives a better understanding of the life Lisa endured with and after her father passed and everything she dealt with and overcame, or tried to, up until the very end. 

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mollymcmuffin's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

5.0


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_rileyroo_'s review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

3.5


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degan_may's review

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

5.0


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djohnson1491's review against another edition

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5.0


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voodoolobster's review against another edition

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3.5


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christielambert's review against another edition

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4.0

Book Review
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Road trip audiobook

Lisa Marie Presley decided to write her memoir and as she was becoming sicker and sicker, she decided to ask her daughter, Riley, to help her finish it. She died shortly thereafter. This book is a beautiful recounting of a tragically traumatized life. It’s woven between Lisa Marie’s words and Riley’s to tell of a life that few understood but most are intrigued by. Lisa Marie endured endless tragedies and so the book is naturally very heavy but that also makes it feel very authentic because it seems to be that her life was really one filled with so much loss and sadness. 

My best friend and I are on a Thelma and Louise type journey and this was the first book we brought along and I don’t regret it. 

If you decide to pick it up, I encourage the audio because the narration includes some taped recording of Lisa Marie combined with her daughter’s devoted and loving voice and to top it off Julia Roberts is the voice of Lisa Marie. The production of the book is truly ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


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ericaereads's review against another edition

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3.5

If ever you needed a primary source that proves the weight of intergenerational trauma (but with a hopeful ending) this is the one. Less a chronological memoir than dialogue of reflections, so go in expecting a lot of naval-gazing with moments of painful self-awareness that provide a complicated, nuanced exploration of addiction, parentification, and abandonment.

Content warnings for addiction, death of a parent (on and off page), suicide, childhood trauma, and emotional manipulation/abuse 

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