An interesting look into the struggle with binge eating, which doesn't get talked about enough. Heartbreaking, but loved this memoir.

A frank. emotional, heart wrenching read.
I am sad that this lady struggled for so long but take my hat off to her for writing this as it will undoubtedly help so many

This was so honest, insightful and eye opening. Sad at times the author never shies away of her painful truth. I learned so much after reading this memoir and I'm grateful for the honesty in here, I feel sympathy and empathy by the author and I'm glad she shared her story. The writing is easy to follow and the MC rajes us through her entire life Journey with food between the horrible days and some better one's and what she did to feel better and how's she facing her mistakes with her emotions, actions and family and the rest of The people in her life.

So many people in this day and age are overweight. As someone who struggles day today with the food I was especially excited to read this book. I haven’t read any other books about somebody struggling with the food addiction so I really have nothing to compare to you but overall I really enjoyed the story

A truly amazing memoir of food addiction coupled with self-hatred. A true eye opener of a book. Does show that you need to purchase a license to drive a car and yet not to parent a child.

I hope that Sara Somers has found peace.

This was such a raw book. Sara Somers poured her heart and soul into this book. It was hard to get through at times only because I had a close friend who went through this and this book was an eye opener. Thank you so much to #netgalley for the arc and thank you to Sara for sharing your story.

A very powerful, raw and honest memoir to show us the life of one woman's addictions. The good, the bad and the ugly. I cheered for Sara as she fought the demons that had overtaken her life.. An absolute must read. Happy reading!

I'll be honest: I'm having a hard time reviewing this book. On one hand, Sara Somers shows great courage sharing her story, and it's an important story than can help people who are struggling with their food consumption and the impact it is having on their lives . On the other hand, I didn't exactly enjoy the way she shared her story.
For starters, the story often jumps back and forth in time, for no good reason. Then she tells us about an adventurous life full of international travel, accompanied by constant buying and eating too much food. What did she do for money? She doesn't explain this. Finally, she seems to attribute everything that went wrong in her life to her food addiction, and it seems like she fails to see just how much she achieved.
Perhaps that's the point of the story? Maybe I missed it!

On a more positive note, as I read, I could relate to some of her experiences, even though I've found a very different way to deal with them. Food, especially very processed food, can be a problem for many people. Ths book can help those who struggle to understand that they aren't alone.

With thanks to Sara Somers, She Writes Press and Netgalley for the ARC. All opinions expressed are my own.

This book was heartbreaking and honest. Food addiction is a real thing but something we don't often see a lot of material on. I found Sara's story of addiction from childhood and not being able to say no to treats to now very interesting and compelling.

I chose to review this book because I have struggled with my weight all of my life.
I related to this memoir.
Sara lays everything out on the table with this book.
This should be a must read for anyone who struggles with weight loss ups and downs.

Thanks to #netgalley for the ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. This memoir is an honest, raw and very real insight into the life and constant struggles of Sara who has had a food addiction for 50 years. Sara poignantly describes her battles with food addiction and how she tries overcome it. It's a heartbreaking and at the same time eye opening read for anyone who is either suffering with food addiction issues directly or knows someone who is. Even anyone who isn't could benefit by hopefully becoming more compassionate to people with this addiction once they read this and learn how it can overpower a person and almost consume their entire lives. A very worthwhile read. A special thankyou to Sara for having the courage to write this and hopefully help other sufferers to realise they are not alone. #savingsara #sarasomers #tea_sipping_bookworm #litsy #goodreads #bookstagram #bookqueen #greatreads #netgalley

Really moving telling of the torture of addiction and the cunning baffling and powerful monster it is.
Heroic story that really touched me. Best wishes to the writer and thanks for giving me access.

Saving Sara is the memoir of someone dealing with binge eating. Sara shares how her relationship with food also destroyed relationships with family, friends, and romantic interests. Sara was self destructive throughout her life which caused her a lot of grief and heartache.

I enjoyed reading this book since I know many people who struggle with binge eating. At some points in the book I wished that she focused more on her binge eating rather than on just sharing events of her life. The second half of the book I found that she was more open sharing her feelings of those moments and how they were affected by her binge eating.

Overall this was an interesting memoir of a topic that is not shared often.

I really wanted to like this book a lot. Instead it was just okay.

I could not believe it. Finally, a memoir on eating disorders that focused on binge eating, instead of the usual anorexia or bulimia. As an extra bonus, OA was actually mentioned in a positive way. I read a lot of books on addiction, so I was excited to read about binge eating and OA.

I don't know why I wasn't into this book. The writing was okay, but I think, for me, this memoir lacked the emotion I normally find in books on addiction.

I am sure that the author felt all the emotions while living her story, but I am not sure she managed to convey it on paper.

Saving Sara by Sara Sommers is a brave effort, and one I applaud. It takes courage to open up about addiction, especially a food addiction which so many people refuse to understand or accept as real. But the author makes it impossible not to accept the reality of her addiction, and the emotional cost she pays.

"I would have denied it at the time, but fear was underneath everything. I was afraid of my parents, of their disappointment in me, of doing anything that was my own idea. I was so afraid of them that I was enraged all the time."

Time and time again throughout this simply-written memoir, we see how that fear dictates and controls the author, and how she battles to understand the connection between it, rage and addiction. When the penny finally dropped and she realized she was an addict and not defective, I wanted it to be immediately life changing. It wasn't. This isn't a scripted after school special, and recovery doesn't happen over night.

As a look into addiction and the life of a food addict, Saving Sara is a valuable read, and I'd definitely recommend it if there's someone in your life struggling with addiction. It offers painful insight into the depth of despair without an overdose of morbidity. And it offers hope.

A very detailed memoir about food addiction but oddly one that has a little self reflection. She talks in detail about her life and food issues but it little insight. It was odd. I ended up feeling rather voyeuristic. I don't think the author had dealt with her issues enough to be ready to write this book.

Sara Somers’s food memoir about being saved from food addiction and the self-destructive behaviors attached to it may resonate with the most compassionate readers and those facing similar struggles, but other readers will likely find this personal food history to be about as appealing as a meal that’s not fully cooked. Somers’s story has the potential to offer insight into the psychological, physical, social, and economical difficulties associated with food addiction, but it just doesn’t deliver. Instead most of the memoir reads like an emotional tirade of self-pity and resentment.

Somers begins her history with childhood, naturally; but she moves from summer camp at age 9 to a Halloween to living in London at age 8 to a history of the schools she attended, making it slightly difficult for the reader to follow along. In these childhood sections, Somers attempts to convey traumatizing experiences that served as the presumable “cause of all [her] many problems,” leaving her feeling lonely and unloved. However, the experiences she describes don’t clearly justify the trauma she seems to have experienced¬. According to her narrative, the worst things to happen to her include her parents moving frequently, being sent to boarding school for a short time, a mother with a busy career who didn’t dote on her, and parents who tried to discipline her. In trying to point a finger at her parents, she only comes across as an extremely difficult child. This self-pitying lightens up slightly in later parts of the memoir, but it generally renders Somers rather unlikeable from the get-go.

As the memoir moves through fifty years of this woman’s life, it tells this same story from her childhood over and over. She feels sad, lonely, depressed; she blames others for her problems; and she eats. These episodes lack the nuance and critical self-reflection that would make them moving. For instance, throughout Somers’s college and post-college hippie days, she seems to have an endless supply of money despite her apparent lack of consistent work. Never once (except in childhood) does she describe difficulties feeding her addictions for lack of funds. Moreover, although the memoir begins with a description of her being “too weak, too fat, and too miserable to hike” at nine-years-old, we later see her hiking in Assisi and Yosemite without any difficulty, and later still she hikes Mount Whitney with apparent ease until she injures her knee, which she then links to her weight (“I was not in shape to climb this kind of mountain”). At this point, she briefly alludes to a ski accident and at another point she mentions her brand new skis, and yet she never describes any ski adventures. A story about participating in these kinds of strenuous physical activities–and perhaps learning to overcome physical barriers she faced as a child–would offer the reader some deeper insight into the multiple ways her weight affects her rather than yet another story about her feeling sexually unattractive to men despite dating several men.

Finally, in addition to the general lack of critical self-reflection and a clear narrative drive, this memoir is missing the marks of a much-needed, strong editorial hand. Information such as an age or unnecessary date is often given and repeated only a couple of sentences later. Somers describes some events in too much detail while not providing enough context for other scenes, such as providing the exact date that she ran into an old friend but leaving out her age in certain childhood scenes. The metaphors, which are also often repeated, tend towards the cliché or are otherwise derivative. For example, Somers uses a bell jar as a metaphor for her depression multiple times without ever making a connection to Sylvia Plath’s classic novel. Punctuation occasionally places emphasis on the wrongs words, causing the reader to re-read sentences. These mechanical matters ultimately make the writing itself dull.

With the poor writing, the lack of depth and originality, and the unsympathetic and self-pitying narrator, I would not recommend this book. In the end, Somers attributes her success to a program with little to no critical reflection on the experiences that primed her to be more receptive to a program she failed to follow in the past. She does not seem to learn anything about herself by the end of her story. Ultimately, for the reader who can’t benefit from Somers’s twelve-step program, there’s nothing to be gained from reading this book.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of Saving Sara by Sara Somers.

Since Sara can remember, she has had an unhealthy relationship with food. Where her peers were able to enjoy a cookie and bowl of ice cream and then continue playing, Sara found herself in a binge, unable to stop eating her treats, and enduring cycle after cycle of shame. Why does food seem to be so difficult for her? And when will she stop going on a weight loss roller coaster?

Food addiction is a real thing and, since we need food to live, it's extraordinarily hard. I imagine it's also a very misunderstood disease since lay people are probably inclined to suggest that maybe the person just "stop eating." But just like with any addiction, the survivor has to put life long work into "staying sober," something that carries equal significance for the food addicted.

This was a very interested read, but probably not the best written? However, must the memoir writer be an expert author to tell their story? Sometimes the roughness of it is what adds authenticity. There was a travelogue vibe to this one, and I have to say that her continuous self flagellation got on my nerves, but that may just be me sorting out my own issues.

Thank you to NetGalley and She Writes Press for the ARC provided.

This is my first time to read a memoir book. There’s been a mixed up feelings after finished reading it ; broken heart, sad, proud, amazed and proud about this woman’s story. Her journey as a person who has food addiction really affected my feelings and learned a lot about how she has to survive, how hard she has to get help really bad and keep falling apart while trying to recover from this kind of addiction.

Sara Somers is binge for food that contain sugar, carbohydrates and grain. What triggers it, from my own opinion is lack of attention from her family and when she found a way where she can work her loneliness feelings, she did it with eating a lots of food, specially the sweets one (please correct me If I’m wrong). This book is raw and honest, her journey when she’s trying to get help by joining the hippies, continue to attend a related meeting (OA - Overeaters Anonymous) is well described in this book. It tells the readers that a person who has an addiction also trying very hard to healed themselves, not giving up just like that. This proves by her journey successfully graduated from the college and earned her license as a therapist. That’s because she want to help the people that has the same problem like her. I really amazed her strong will and not giving up so easily kind of attitude, in order to fight her addiction. She lost a lot of great moments half of her life but she also filled those moments with amazing journey, recovery, travel abroad, meeting a lot of people, and finally gained her life back.

Highly recommend this book to anyone who struggling/dealing with an addiction, helping people with the addiction or having interest with this type of genre.

Saving Sara is the true story of a lifetime struggle with eating disorders, drug abuse, and mental illness. Sara is to be commended for sharing her bravery in sharing her story.

I would recommend this title to anyone struggling with these disorders, and to anyone with a family member struggling with the same.

This particular digital copy is a little difficult to read, as the formatting seems to have been lost when the title was uploaded.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received a free digital copy of this title to review from Net Galley.

#SavingSara#NetGalley