An absolutely open raw very entertaining memoir a book I enjoyed from first to last page.Laurie Woolever spares herself nothing shares her faults her mistakes her writing voice is so entertaining her discussing various situations she manages to get herself into describing her chaotic life decisions her love life.Working with at that time iconic chefs Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain these incredibly well known chefs at the height of their popularity was a peak into their world an insiders intimate view.Second book I’ve read by this author she’s a true pleasure to spend time with.#netgalley#eccobooks

I've been an admirer of Laurie Woolever's work for a long time and it's a real thrill to see her claim her own extremely compelling narrative separate from the powerful men she worked for. Women aren't always given the cultural freedom to reveal ourselves as messy and complicated in the same way that men are — but that doesn't mean we're not that way. In this memoir, Woolever unflinchingly owns her actions and impulses and consequences without self-pitying or glamorizing them, and she absolutely roars on the page. Sure, you may come for the Bourdain and Batali of it all (and there's plenty), but it's in her own story that you'll be sated.

I found this memoir to be fascinating, compulsively readable, and fairly introspective. The writing style was engaging and I kept wanting to read the next chapter. I also found the protagonist likeable and was rooting for her even when she was making clearly terrible choices (as she acknowledged throughout). That said, I wished that there was less of a focus on her escapades and more of a focus on her internal experience -- I found those sections more interesting overall.

The author has had extensive experience in the food world, most notably as assistant to both Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain. She has co-authored books with both men.

In this intriguing book, she documents her life during this period. She describes in detail the humiliation and exhilaration of working with Batali, a known womanizer. She describes in detail her mostly positive experience assisting Bourdain in his cookbooks, his travels, his television shows.

She also describes in detail her own troubled life: alcoholic, married to a man she isn't sure she loves, cheating, her eventual path to recovery and their eventual divorce.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC.