Allison Holker is such a courageous and brave person to write this book.  She deserves kindness and respect for sharing her story.  A story that might help people pick up the pieces after a tragedy.  Anyone affected by something similar to what Allison went through might find encouragement in her words.  Additionally, anyone who has been a fan of SYTYCD or of Allison's or her husband's will enjoy the description of their early love and building a family together.  Allison's story of being a young dancer was very interesting and I'm glad she shared it.  This book is beautifully written and very tender.  Allison is inspiring!  I highly recommend this book!

I was only somewhat familiar with Allison Holker and her late husband, so this story was new to me. I feel for her loss and can't imagine what it's like to grieve publicly. I appreciate her honesty and feel like she honored her husband even while sharing difficult details.

I was really interested in reading this book to following this person through her whole career. It was interesting to hear about all the background personal details the public didn’t know.

I loved both Allison and Twitch (Stephen) on SYTYCD, was happily surprised when they got together, and was completely shocked when Stephen took his own life. I read Allison's book hoping to get a more complete picture of all of those things, and she mostly delivered. Reading her words about losing Stephen and the aftermath was heartbreaking.

I do wish there was more in the book about her time on SYTYCD. I also wish that some parts were a little more edited in order to elevate her writing style. But I'm thankful that she was open to sharing these moments with us fans, both the happy and the hard.

This book could have been a magazine article or an interview with Oprah. I feel it’s just a book for Alison to tell us what happen with Stephen’s suicide. It shouldn’t have been a published book. I would have been really upset if I spent my money on this book. I think that she should have just been paid for an interview. I wasn’t impressed.

I loved following Allison Holker and Twitch on social media and was brokenhearted for their family at his passing. I was very interested to read this, however saddened when I learned his family was hurt and upset by the book. I found Holker's story very moving, and I can certainly understand the therapeutic value in writing and sharing your story. The book was well-written and her story was told well, but I tried to remember that there are 2 sides, or often more, to every story as I read this.

This Far is a raw and emotional memoir full of love, loss, and finding strength. It deals with many heavy topics including mental illness, grief, trauma, pain, and healing. I enjoyed learning more about Allison’s childhood and early dance career. The second half of the book turns heavy, but with an honest perspective on how to persevere in even the most difficult of times.

This is hard to rate because she spends a lot of time detailing her husband, Stephen’s, suicide, and her pain and anger is palpable. But it rubs me the wrong way that she is open about so many things no one knew about him—including her until after his death—yet she glosses over specific events in her life and explicitly says she doesn’t want to discuss them. I understand using this book as a way to tell her story and deal with her grief, but I don’t think she is healed enough to effectively tell it. It very much reads like a book about Stephen’s death more than her memoir. Thanks to NetGalley, Harper Select, and Allison Holker for this free ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I’m not sure how I feel about this book. The author has a right to her feelings, but some things I feel are better left unsaid

This is a tough review. First, what I appreciated about this book was how she explains how much anger and pain there is for those left behind by someone who commits suicide.

My greatest upset though is she throws out a theory that maybe he killed himself because he was afraid he would sexually abuse his own son. She has no basis for this, just a potential reason. That is a horrific thing to put out into the world if you don't strongly believe it was true. How could you say this about someone you loved as just a guess?

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC for an honest review.

⭐️⭐️💫 Thank you to @netgalley for the opportunity to read and review an advanced copy of This Far by Allison Holker.

This book is very much Alison thinking out loud. She has questions she won’t ever get answered so she’s asking them in this book. There’s nothing wrong with that, in my opinion.

This book brought more understanding to Twitch’s passing. She outlines all the issues she missed. They all seemed very obvious to me, but I can see how when you love someone you may be blinded. So I think in the end this may help people who see these changes in their loved ones.

His family came out frustrated about signing NDAs for his services, and I 100% support Alison’s decision. People were invited to the private wake that she didn’t know, that she said he barely even knew. You never know what they might do, and she had a good point about these photos not popping up online for her children to see one day (anyone remember how this happened with Whitney?!).

I was conflicted because I wanted to read her book early on. Then when I heard that she discussed very private things about Twitch, I was angry and didn’t want to read it. But Net Galley was kind enough to offer me an advanced copy so I decided to read it.

While Alison does talk about her life, it’s not very deep. It’s very matter-of-fact. The meat of the story is her capitalizing on her husband’s tragedy. While that angers me, I also see the point that this can really show people what they should look out for. I think maybe there would have been a way for her to do it without revealing his childhood trauma and the fact that he had a mountain of drugs hidden away. Those two things probably didn’t need to be revealed.

Do I recommend reading it? I truly don’t know.

I have been of fan of Stephen (Twitch) and Allison since So You Think You Can Dance. They were both such a light together in this crazy world. When I heard about his death it was so shocking I couldn’t even process it myself.

As someone who lost someone to suicide as well it’s so hard to accept that they went through things we didn’t know about. The questioning of whether we could have done something before, what were their final thoughts and the anger we feel for them leaving us like this.

Throughout the book, you can see all of her stages of grief writing it. Reading her story was very healing to me and I hope writing it has helped her as well.

Thank you for telling your story Allison.

I had been such a fan of Allison and Stephen's videos on IG - I didn't know either of them other than that, and I knew he was on Ellen. But just the rest of the world, I was SHOCKED by his death...even more so that it was a suicide. He just seemed to be happy. From that perspective, I can see why she wrote this book. To give people a glimpse of real life and that Stephen was a person who loved deeply, had great trauma and loss and while he smiled on the outside, he struggled at an uncontrollable level no one can understand. I think she did a beautiful job telling his and their stories. I know people came after her for writing this book and felt she was unfairly representing him but she gave a difficult glimpse of not only what he went through but the aftermath of their family when he was gone. Thank you, Harper Select, NetGalley and Allison Holker for this ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I never really understood all of the negative publicity Allison Holker had to take in the aftermath of writing this book. Me, like so many of us could not understand why her husband would commit suicide and what she did was try to answer this question for us and for herself. Anything more than that I truly don't believe. I find this book was something she had to do, and something that I hope helped her grieve and possibly understand something that is so hard to understand. I felt it honest and could hear the anger and pain she is still feeling. She didn't have to give anyone answers but I am glad that she was able to share her story.

Thank you to Harper Select for the ARC!

Please read trigger warnings about this book before reading the book or this review.

This is the memoir of Allison Holker, a dancer who competed on So You Think You Can Dance and who later married Stephen "tWitch" Boss. I was a fan of both on the show & followed tWitch's fame from a far over the years. Holker's memoir does describe her younger years, but the main focus was on her marriage to tWitch & his sudden death in 2022.

This is a difficult read to provide an opinion on because of it both being a memoir, the sensitive topics, and the controversy that has surrounded the release of the memoir, which includes information that tWitch had kept hidden from even his closest relationships. I believe that Holker was trying to connect with an audience who may have experienced a sudden loss and wanted to stress that seeking mental health help is important for everyone. She wrote about her complex emotions & part of her story is wrapped up in tWitch's story. There was a lot in the book that was written with a lot of respect and love. There were also some passages dealing with the complex feelings that come from grief, especially for those impacted by mental health of a family member.

One aspect that didn't track for me was that she decided not to give details about a traumatic event in her life, but then gave details about a traumatic event tWitch wrote about in his journal which was previously undisclosed except to one trusted friend.

Overall, I felt that Holker had the best of intentions but also had a few blind spots when writing this raw memoir so shortly after tWitch's death. This was a quick read with the simple, conversational writing style of Holker & I do agree with her advocacy that mental health should be prioritized more in our culture & the harmful impact of toxic positivity. With the content & trigger warnings, this may not be a read for everyone but it was worthwhile.

I found this book raw and emotional. You can see the intense love the couple had and how sometimes even that deep love doesn’t make one partner open up to all the things that happen in our head. Allison was very honest sounding and sincere in her writing and I just wanted to hug her and those precious children.

I wanted to like this but I feel like it was less about her journey and more like I’m a victim. With all the controversy coming out recently, I would have liked to see Allison portraying herself as a strong resilient mother but I just didn’t see that.

A well-written, interesting memoir about the life Allison Holker of So You Think You Can Dance fame thought she knew with her husband, Stephen (tWitch) Boss, and the aftermath of his suicide. I think memoirs are important because they give the author a chance to share their side of the story, and reflect on the path that led them to where they are in life. This is hard to read as a fan of both of theirs, yet it unveils the reality that everyone is struggling with something. It also shows the remarkable resilience of family and healing. I think it's easy to read this with an eye toward judging what she did or didn't do, but if we look at this as her journey, it is a very emotional read that will stick with the reader.

Thank you to Harper Select and Allison Holker for this heartbreaking yet resilient book. I had to really take my time and absorb her words and how Stephen's death has affected who she is and who her children are. This was a tragedy yet as Allison points out a clear choice. Suicide is just a word it is not the aftermath of what everyone who is left experiences as their loved one is gone yet still and will always have that piece of time of their lives. This is a forever choice, there is no going back. We all saw that smiling, dancing, handsome man, we did not know who he was or what he was facing. Read this book, listen to her pain, and remember there is always a choice.

Thanks to Netgalley and Harper Select for eARC.

Rough book. But that's to be expected when talking about suicide. I think it was handled exceptionally well; the love and hurt are quite clear, to me. Nothing heinous or malicious, just raw honesty and heartbreak. It just....really effing sucks. What happened.

As for the writing style, I prefer memoirs that feel personal, like they're telling the story in person or you're reading their journal, but this had that biography feel to it; like, here's all the facts of this person's life from birth to present! It's not that Allison writes poorly, just that the tone is less my jam versus someone like Augusten Burroughs. Allison covers her early life up into the present in mostly linear fashion and doesn't hold back on any topic, which I appreciate. I highlighted numerous passages; I think this could be helpful to others, be it reevaluating potential signs or seeing in print you're not alone, garnering ideas on how to heal and deal, prompting difficult conversations.

People looking for gore and gossip should look elsewhere.