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A review by khiramoore1
Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir by Dolly Alderton
5.0
I bought this book on November 16, 2023, the day I turned 20 years old. Of course, I’d read the reviews on this app and heard the buzz it created on Tik Tok but I usually take trends with a grain of salt. Still, when I read the lines on a bad Tik Tok edit, “nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learnt in my long term friendships with women” i knew that it would be something i needed to read. The summer before my 20th birthday I decided that on the day that marked the end of my teenage adolescence, I had to buy it. I had to consume it and internalize the inner monologue of a random British woman.
So I did. I read fifty pages, closed the book and returned to it a week later after my lengthy midterms were over. I read it in the three hours spent in the lobby of my college city’s airport. I read it on the plane from my college town to my hometown. And I read it on the plane back, a week later.
I finished it in a coffee shop next to one of my closest friends after a long day of classes post Thanksgiving break. I was sipping on red velvet hot chocolate and highlighting entire sections in yellow. When I finished, I borrowed a pen from a stranger to write the time I finished and a little note to my future self under the acknowledgment section.
This books was an unforgettable journey that made my upcoming and dreaded twenties seem a little less scary. I’d made my endless pursuit of love (harbored from the rom coms of my youth) seem a little less ambitious and arbitrary. I smiled a little brighter around my closest friends, knowing that everything I’ll ever need to know about love, I’ll know from them. They’ll last longer than any temporary relationship or crush. They’ll bring me soup when I’m sick with cold and make me laugh when I’m on the brink of falling apart. And the movies and the books make platonic love undesirable, just a placeholder to fill the void of romance. But I know the truth. One that I’ve always known and been too caught up in my own fantasies to remember.
Love is a feeling, it’s what drives the purest and most radical human emotion on this planet. And it exists in everyone, everywhere. I’d be nothing without my beautiful funny amazing lovely friends. I’m fit for so many beautiful things in this universe and Dolly Aldertons memoir helped open my eyes a bit more to the billions of things that I’m capable of.
So I did. I read fifty pages, closed the book and returned to it a week later after my lengthy midterms were over. I read it in the three hours spent in the lobby of my college city’s airport. I read it on the plane from my college town to my hometown. And I read it on the plane back, a week later.
I finished it in a coffee shop next to one of my closest friends after a long day of classes post Thanksgiving break. I was sipping on red velvet hot chocolate and highlighting entire sections in yellow. When I finished, I borrowed a pen from a stranger to write the time I finished and a little note to my future self under the acknowledgment section.
This books was an unforgettable journey that made my upcoming and dreaded twenties seem a little less scary. I’d made my endless pursuit of love (harbored from the rom coms of my youth) seem a little less ambitious and arbitrary. I smiled a little brighter around my closest friends, knowing that everything I’ll ever need to know about love, I’ll know from them. They’ll last longer than any temporary relationship or crush. They’ll bring me soup when I’m sick with cold and make me laugh when I’m on the brink of falling apart. And the movies and the books make platonic love undesirable, just a placeholder to fill the void of romance. But I know the truth. One that I’ve always known and been too caught up in my own fantasies to remember.
Love is a feeling, it’s what drives the purest and most radical human emotion on this planet. And it exists in everyone, everywhere. I’d be nothing without my beautiful funny amazing lovely friends. I’m fit for so many beautiful things in this universe and Dolly Aldertons memoir helped open my eyes a bit more to the billions of things that I’m capable of.