Book Review // Maybe You Should Talk To Someone

Rating: 3.5/5

Synopsis:
"One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose of­fice she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.

As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.

With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change." Amazon.com

Review:

Not 5 stars?? I’m just as surprised as you are. 

Not only was this book 100 pages too long, it was a drawn out sad whiny story about Lori getting dumped by her boyfriend who told her he didn’t want to date someone with kids, after 2 years of dating her, and her 8 yr old son. Don’t get me wrong, that’s super upsetting and getting dumped is the worst. But it went on and on of her complaining to her own therapist. 

This book read very fictional and I think that’s why my heart wasn’t completely invested in the characters. The stories weren’t real. She said she changed names and circumstances to protect her patients, and I get that, but why write a nonfiction book with zero parts true? And Lori seemed to lack any vulnerability in her therapy sessions with her own therapist, Wendell (I died a slow death with that name choice). If anything, I wish Lori made herself have the depth and realness, but it just came of complaining and annoying after awhile.

I thought she had a lot of wisdom when helping guide her patients. And I think she’s a wonderful therapist! All of the quotes I tagged were enlightened moments they shared. She just came of a train wreck in her own journey (which I guess is the point maybe? That maybe we’re all train wrecks at some point in our lives?). I don’t know. I liked it, but I didn’t love it. And I’m bummed that I bought it.