I appreciate the authors honesty and willingness to bare all, but unfortunately I just didn’t gel with this book and found myself skimming get it finished. Just didn’t connect with this one sorry,

This was a DNF for me. Couldn’t connect with it and the timelines were confusing. If I try to read in the future I will update my thoughts.

Parise has a distinct voice and tells a story I'm sure many women who find themselves picking up the pieces can relate to. She doesn't shy away from telling her truth, unabashedly sharing ups and downs in her quest to share her story in the hopes it makes someone else feel less alone.

An amazingly honest story! Alone: A Love Story is one of the most intensely funny, deeply sad, and beautiful books I’ve read in a long time. Be prepared to weep and to laugh out loud in equal measure. I loved this book! I highly recommend it!

Very emotional read about a woman going through a divorce and picking up the pieces. Having never been in this position, I can only assume that is the reason for my not connecting with her. The author did an excellent job with the story line and you felt like she was really talking with you. However, I would not have held back and told her about her terrible choices. Maybe it just seemed to unrealistic for me.

A Single Sex in the City Toronto. The author takes us through her loves and lovers while becoming a single mother. Amusing and abit whiney.

Copy provided by the publisher and NetGalley

I think I had some sort of expectation of a love story going wrong and being okay with being alone and finding yourself. Obviously that was on me for just assuming so. The time lines were a bit confusing and went back and forth so I ended up skimming through this. The heart break was real and raw but Paris still manages to add some humor within this.

I'm trying to be objective here, but I do not know for sure if objectivity is something helpful when it comes to someone else's life and emotions. I must note though that I read 40% of the book and skimmed through the rest.

My first pet peeve in this book was that it has nothing to do with being ALONE. It is all about finding refuge in someone else's life, drama, heart, etc. I totally understand that what the author felt is real for her there and then-- I'm not judging. But it was a restless alternating of dramas without the least progress towards resolve. I kind of expected something along the lines of Eat, Pray, Love but, of course, different and unique to the author's own circumstances. But it ended up as a diluted version of Queenie, completely without the panache.

My second pet peeve was that the jumping back and forth of the timeline was weird, distracting and made me lose patience all the more with the telling.

Lastly, the book could have been a lot shorter, distilling the whole experience of the author in fewer pages, since the whole experience doesn't variably alter from one chapter to the next. It is not fiction, so I am not in for the prose, but I'm definitely in for the punch.

Thank you St Martin's Press and NetGalley for the ARC.

So this is a woman telling her story in a very honest, and very real way. There are moments that she reveals her vulnerability, her darkest thoughts and her utter despair. You laugh, you cry and you connect with her, because she bares herself to you. I am impressed by her willingness to share and to speak candidly about her experiences.

I have to admit when I started reading this I was struggling with the setup and timelines. As I progressed through I began to find my rhythm with the writing style and events started coming together. It was like being handed someone’s pain in the form of a journal that speaks directly to the reader. Though it jumps back and forth it does become a heart wrenching, depressive and anguishingly frustrating read. This was emotion I could feel deep in my soul as everything unraveled. This is a fear that niggles at the back of your mind during the really rough patches of marriage and Parise effectively captures the collapse of the kingdom to another queen.

There is a lot of detail in this memoir and I did feel at times that less could definitely be more. But who am I to tell someone how to write their feelings during a devastating time in their life? I can only let other readers know to expect the extra among these pages. This novel tugs your heart through the defining moments of Parise learning of her husband’s infidelity, dealing with becoming a single co-parenting mom and traversing the single life landscape to find new love.

I was not expecting to feel as much as I did. In a world where woman want to be perceived as strong, bold and unbreakable; Parise puts the struggle of her reality out there in all of its uncensored glory.

Reader warning: infidelity, alcoholism, depression, promiscuity and sexual scenes.
I received this advanced reader e-book in exchange for an honest and unbiased opinion. Thank you to Parise and Dundurn Press for the opportunity to read and review this memoir.

This book was amazing. Sometimes it takes falling to rock bottom before you realize that you need to start climbing to the top. I would totally recommend.

Barely a 2 star.
This was someone's life, her emotions were real to her, her behaviour patterns were chosen. It was not a book for me.

It was often confusing with the back and forth time lines of stories of the men in her life. Overkill and way too many details, this book could have been shorter and still made the same point.
I am a little embarrassed to know that women can still believe that love hangs on the hat of so much dramatic emotion.
I am disappointed that self-pity, and fleeting moments of sexual encounters with strangers can sell books.
I do not recommend this book for any emotionally self-aware woman who is doing her best to recover from a failed relationship. It will make you cringe.
Where was the insight to her life?

A raw and emotional memoir from a woman who had everything and then one day - didn't. On the edge of 40, which is already a life change itself - Michelle navigates the world half as a parent and half as a party-girl, learning the greatest lesson - that she can do it on her own.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

From the cover, I imagined this would be a rom com, a little light reading for the summer. However, it definately was not. It was one woman's story of her courtship, marriage,divorce,, and post-divorce life. The author shows herself in this story, warts and all, and really makes no apology for it, which is refreshing. She is not writing the book to say this is how the reader should handle her life, but to say this is how she handled hers. I did find it disturbing that she gave all the other "characters" in the story nicknames. I think it seperates the reader from the story instead of bringing us into it. Nevertheless, I would recommend this book, but feel like it might be a good idea to think about changing the cover.

I always find it tricky to rate memoirs because who am I to judge someone else's life experiences? I can't rate the plot because it's someone's life and I can't rate character development because it's written about a real person.

For the purpose of Netgalley and Goodreads I gave it 4/5 as there is a lot of time jumping which I found tricky to follow. But after reading and beginning to listening to the podcast I wondered if this was intentional. The way the book is written, it's like Michelle is talking to you about her past and it made me think of when we talk to people about things that have happened to us sometimes we also jump back and forth between events. I don't know if that was the purpose or not, but it just my interpretation.

About 1/4 of the way in, I knew this book was going to break my heart. And it did. Alone: A Love Story begins on Michelle's 39th birthday. At this point she is seeing The Man In The White Shirt. But before that she was married to The Scientist. When you get married it's forever. But for Michelle, it lasted for 9 years. What follows is Michelle's journey through heartbreak, frustration and loneliness until one day she meets The Man In The White Shirt.

This book made me realise how fragile our current moment is. We live our lives so sure of it, so content in our security, feeling so safe in our relationships but ultimately the power to change these things lie in someone else's hands. We can believe their promises, we can convince ourselves to be sure of what they're saying and we can trust them. But none of that really means anything because ultimately it comes back to that age old saying; you just never know what will happen.

The writing was fast paced, the chapters were fairly short but they packed a lot in. Because this was written about a real experience, the writing was honest and that's what made it beautiful. Nothing felt dramatised or underplayed. It just was what it was.
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Thank you @netgalley for this arc.

A raw, heartfelt memoir from Michelle Parise. She packed so much emotion into this book and really takes the reader for a ride through heartbreak. She captures exactly how it feels to experience heartbreak and loneliness, and writes in such a way that it feels like you're having a conversation with her rather than reading a book. Beautiful.

I was not expecting to love this book so much, or to devour it in two sittings. There aren't a lot of books out there that pack this much of an emotional punch. This book broke my heart into a million pieces and did a terrible job putting them all back in place. I'm writing this many days after finishing the book because I was still trying to process all of the emotions from it. Think of this book as your first real break up. You will feel every emotion. You will fall in love with the characters and ride all the ups and downs along the way. The writing style is both beautiful and eloquent. Alone: A Love Story is everything I wanted it to be and more. It is both a love letter to relationships and a love letter to being fine on your own.

This is a story of love, marriage, struggles, divorce, more struggles and a journey of self-discovery. It was a fast read and never a bore. I loved the author's style: it's intimate, flowing and she manages to capture the reader's interest from the first page.

From start to finish this book felt less like reading and more like hearing the story from the author over a bottle of wine. There were many tangents and time timeline was all over the place but the writing was so personal and the emotional heartache so raw, I couldn’t put it down. Anyone who has ever had their heart broken will relate to the ups and downs of coming to terms with being alone as it is portrayed in this book.

Huge moment for podcasts and podcast content; this is the basis for the popular podcast of the same name. Would do well in the library!