Dolly Alderton

"Reading this book is like coming home from a bad date and finding the person who knows you best in the world sitting on your couch, ready to pour you a glass of wine and give you a hug."--Kristen Roupenian, author of Cat Person The wildly funny, occasionally heartbreaking internationally bestselling memoir about growing up, growing older, and learning to navigate friendships, jobs, loss, and love along the ride When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming an adult, journalist and former Sunday Times columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all. In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, finding a job, getting drunk, getting dumped, realizing that Ivan from the corner shop might just be the only reliable man in her life, and that absolutely no one can ever compare to her best girlfriends. Everything I Know About Love is about bad dates, good friends and--above all else-- realizing that you are enough. Glittering with wit and insight, heart and humor, Dolly Alderton's unforgettable debut weaves together personal stories, satirical observations, a series of lists, recipes, and other vignettes that will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age--making you want to pick up the phone and tell your best friends all about it. Like Bridget Jones' Diary but all true, Everything I Know About Love is about the struggles of early adulthood in all its terrifying and hopeful uncertainty.

Everything I Know about Love

lara

A reminder that no matter what we lose, no matter how uncertain and unpredictable life gets, some people really do walk next to you for ever.

I don't really care where I live when I'm older, I just want to live near you.

A week into my big New York adventure, I realized that places are kingdoms of memories and relationships; that the landscape is only ever a reflection of how you feel inside.

Farly squeezed my hand underneath the table twice, fast and hard. I knew what it meant. A universal, silent Morse code for "I'm here, I love you. At that moment I realised everything had changed: we had transitioned. We had chosen each other. We were family. (...) My mess only takes proper shape with that familiar and favourite piece of my life standing next to me. (...) She is, in short, my best friend.

Aina

When you’re looking for love and it seems like you might not ever find it, remember you probably have access to an abundance of it already, just not the romantic kind. This kind of love might not kiss you in the rain or propose marriage. But it will listen to you, inspire and restore you. It will hold you when you cry, celebrate when you're happy and sing All Saints with you when you're drunk. You have so much to gain and learn from this kind of love. You can carry it with you for ever. Keep it as close to you as you can.

More often than not, the love someone gives you will be a reflection of the love you give yourself. If you can't treat yourself with kindness, care and patience, chances are someone else won't either.

Nearly everything I know about love, I've learnt in my long-term friendships with women. Particularly the ones I have I have lived with at one point or another. I know what it is to know every tiny detail about a person and revel in that knowledge as if it were an academic subject. When it comes to the girls I've built homes with, I'm like the woman who can predict what her husband will order at every restaurant.

Rip open hearts with your fury and tear down egos with your modesty. Be the person you wish you could be, not the person you feel you are doomed to be. Let yourself run away with your feelings. You were made so that someone could love you. Let them love you.

Places are kingdoms of memories and relationships; that the landscape is only ever a reflection of how you feel inside.

I wondered if l would ever have that with someone or if I was even built to float in a sea of love.

But I feel so far behind you and I'm worried you'll run out of sight.

You get your go for, say, your birthday or a brunch, then you have to pass her back round to the boyfriend to start the long, boring rotation again.

These gaps in each other's lives slowly but surely form a gap in the middle of your friendship. The love is still there, but the familiarity is not. Before you know it, you’re not living life together any more. You're living life separately with respective boyfriends then meeting up for dinner every six weekends to tell each other what living is like.

I would like to pause the story a moment to talk about ‘nothing will change’. I’ve heard it said to me repeatedly by women I love during my twenties when they move in with boyfriends, get engaged, move abroad, get married, get pregnant. ‘Nothing will change’. It drives me bananas. Everything will change. Everything will change. The love we have for each other stays the same, but the format, the tone, the regularity and the intimacy of our friendship will change for ever.

It began with a train journey. I always thought something brilliant might happen to me on a train. The transitional state of a long journey has always seemed to me the most romantic and magical of places to find yourself in; marooned in a cosy pod of your own thoughts, suspended in mid-air, travelling through a wodge of silent, blank pages between two chapters. A place where phones dip in and out of consciousness and you're forced to spend time with your thoughts, working out what needs to be reshaped and reordered.

Your imagination has the daily workout of an Olympic athlete when you attend an all-girls school.

Any woman who spent her formative years surrounded only by other girls will tell you the same thing: you never really shake off the idea that boys are the most fascinating, beguiling, repulsive, bizzare creatures to roam the earth; as dangerous and mythological as a Sasquatch.

I blame my high expectations for love on two things: the first is that I am the child of parents who are almost embarrassingly infatuated with each other; the second is the films I watched in my formative years.

Victoria Oge-Evans

When you’re look for love, and it seems like you may never find it remember you probably have access to an abundance of it already.

rachel

On the flight home, I daydreamed of Tottenham Court Road and ordering shit off Amazon.

Gladys Marcos

Therapy is a great archeological dig on your psyche until you hit something.

Maria M

I carried on because, at every turn, society was rewarding me for my self-inflicted torture. 

Keira

And if this is it, if this is all there is — just me and the trees and the sky and the seas — I know now that that's enough.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER WITH A NEW CHAPTER ON TURNING THIRTY 'There is no writer quite like Dolly Alderton working today and very soon the world will know it' Lisa Taddeo, author Three Women 'The book we will thrust into our friends' hands. Alderton feels like a best friend and your older sister all rolled into one and her pages wrap around you like a warm hug' Evening Standard Award-winning journalist Dolly Alderton survived her twenties (just about) and in Everything I Know About Love, she gives an unflinching account of the bad dates and squalid flat-shares, the heartaches and humiliations, and most importantly, the unbreakable female friendships that helped her to hold it all together. Glittering with wit, heart and humour, this is a book to press into the hands of every woman who has ever been there or is about to find themselves taking that first step towards the rest of their lives. 'Alderton is Nora Ephron for the millennial generation' Elizabeth Day 'Steeped in furiously funny accounts of one-night stands, ill-advised late-night taxi journeys up the M1, grubby flat-shares and the beauty of female friendships, as Alderton joyfully booze-cruises her way through her twenties' Metro 'Deeply funny, sometimes shocking, and admirably open-hearted and optimistic' Daily Telegraph 'A sensitive, astute and funny account of growing up millennial' Observer 'I loved its truth, self awareness, humour and most of all, its heart-spilling generosity' Sophie Dahl 'Alderton proves a razor-sharp observer of the shifting dynamics of long term female friendship' Mail on Sunday 'It's so full of life and laughs - I gobbled up this book. Alderton has built something beautiful and true out of many fragments of daftness' Amy Liptrot *Winner of Autobiography of the Year at the National Book Awards 2018* *A Waterstones Paperback of the Year 2019* *A Sunday Times paperback of the year 2019* *Selected for Stylist's The Decade's 15 Best Books by Remarkable Women*

Everything I Know About Love

yearner.

“She loves order; I'm inclined towards mess. She loves rules; I hate rules...She is very present and focused on tasks at hand; I am always half in life, half in a fantastical version of it in my head. But, somehow, we work.”

“A universal, silent Morse code for Im here, I love you. At that moment I realized that everything had changed: we had transitioned. We had chosen each other. We were family.”

Won’t rate cause I didn’t finish. I’ve tried reading this book physically, electronically, and now in an audiobook narrated by the author and I just can’t do it. It did remind me to go finish someone else’s memoir though. 

Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love

 is a chaotic love letter to girlhood, friendship, and the beautiful mess of growing up. Rasanya baca buku ini tuh seperti ngintip diary personal teman yang kalian kenal dari kecil and watches her grow up. The emotion feels raw and messy, but relatable.

What struck me most is how the book shows that 

 isn’t always about romantic relationships, sometimes the most important lessons come from the quiet and enduring kind of love between friends.

I especially loved how Alderton explores the difference between 

, and how easy it is to confuse the two. And Farly, being the opposite of Dolly in so many ways, becomes this perfect mirror that shows how differently we all seek and define love.

Bukunya sangat seru dan entertaining, overall. Ada chapter yang isinya resep masakan dan email/letter yang completely came out of nowehere yang gak related dengan Dolly but still so fun while reading it.

Rayyan.

Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love is a chaotic love letter to girlhood, friendship, and the beautiful mess of growing up. Rasanya baca buku ini tuh seperti ngintip diary personal teman yang kalian kenal dari kecil and watches her grow up. The emotion feels raw and messy, but relatable.

What struck me most is how the book shows that understanding love isn’t always about romantic relationships, sometimes the most important lessons come from the quiet and enduring kind of love between friends.

I especially loved how Alderton explores the difference between intensity and intimacy, and how easy it is to confuse the two. And Farly, being the opposite of Dolly in so many ways, becomes this perfect mirror that shows how differently we all seek and define love.

Bukunya sangat seru dan entertaining, overall. Ada chapter yang isinya resep masakan dan email/letter yang completely came out of nowehere yang gak related dengan Dolly but still so fun while reading it.

Keila Rico 

i read this a while ago, we're talking years ago, and i cannot stop thinking about it fondly and comparing similar books to it, so im bumping it from a 4.75 to a 5 star! I recommend this to literally all of my girlies in their 20s, it is such a comforting book

Stas

The perfect book for any girl in their twenties to read!!!

Ella Williams

So funny! 

The perfect book for any girl in their twenties to read!!!

lovely book, beautiful stories i felt like i can relate to a lot of them, would recommend to any girl in their early 20s

Tutto quello che so sull'amore

Auch wenn ich ewig gebraucht habe um es zu lesen, ein sehr schönes Buch über Freundschaft 

Cristina

really beautiful outlooks and thoughts about life, love, career, and growing up as a woman. everything in this book spoke to me so deeply that i am still thinking about this book after months of finishing it. amazing memoir by dolly alderton, so touching and so honest. 

minji kim

Such an easy read, I found this to be an escape from my real life activities. Certain chapters like "Nothing Will Change" and "Florence" were very well written, raw and honest. I think those were the chapters that affected me most simply because they were the ones I myself could relate to a lot. Got from this book exactly what I expected I would.

This book is amusing yet at the same time it’s like listening to a big sister’s advice. It talks about navigating your way through love, life, friendships and relationships in your youth. As someone in her twenties, I could relate so much to her especially when it comes to having your best friends getting into serious relationships and you’re just… there. It did comfort me and made me realize that it’s okay to feel that way. Your feelings are valid. 

I couldn’t get myself to read beyond 50 pages pls it reads like a millennial rant and went on and on with no substantial content to actually connect with 😕 bleh! 

farro

Easy read, I think I related to it largely on being in the same stage of life and born in the same era. I don't know if I would have enjoyed it as much otherwise.

The first half of this book was 1 star for me - meandering, silly, and poorly edited. The second half was 5 stars - filled with touching anecdotes, brilliant truths, and quotes to remember for life. Whether this was intentional to show the author’s growth or not remains unclear. The second half is worth sticking with it through the first.

Kaylee Weaver

very slow and then got very interesting so i continued reading until i finished and was left little unsatisfied… 

debbie <3

Emily

Sadie Hoffman

this was like listening to fresh gossip! i loved it all the stories were so brilliant visual. I could picture all the places around england she was describing which made it even better 

Kirsten Kim

“to lower your heart rate and drift off on nights when sleep feels impossible, dream of all the adventures that lie ahead of you and the distances you’ve traveled so far. wrap your arms tightly round your body and, as you hold yourself, hold this one thought in your head: i’ve got you.”

the start of this felt disjointed and slow but when it got into the flow and used to the rhythm i really enjoyed it. as a person who turned 30 in April this year i think i needed the last third of it more than i knew.

Cici Pearson

moonstone

'Alderton is Nora Ephron for the millennial generation' Elizabeth Day 'With courageous honesty, Alderton documents the highs and the lows - the sex, the drugs, the nightmare landlords, the heartaches and the humiliations. Deeply funny, sometimes shocking, and admirably open-hearted and optimistic' Daily Telegraph 'A sensitive, astute and funny account of growing up millennial' Observer 'The book we will thrust into our friends' hands . . . that will help heal a broken heart. Alderton's wise words can resonate with women of all ages. She feels like a best friend and your older sister all rolled into one and her pages wrap around you like a warm hug' Evening Standard 'I loved its truth, self awareness, humour and most of all, its heart-spilling generosity' Sophie Dahl 'Steeped in furiously funny accounts of one-night stands, ill-advised late-night taxi journeys up the M1, grubby flat-shares and the beauty of female friendships, as Alderton joyfully booze-cruises her way through her twenties' Metro 'Alderton proves a razor-sharp observer of the shifting dynamics of long term female friendship' Mail on Sunday 'It's so full of life and laughs - I gobbled up this book. Alderton has built something beautiful and true out of many fragments of daftness' Amy Liptrot

The Sunday Times Top 5 Bestseller

This book is great, so much insight about life with family,friend and love! Having read this at the beginning of my 20s, I could not relate to everything but I feel more prepared? now for what the future holds. I love the variation of writing from emails to lists, it made it not boring to read. So many relatable and funny moments too!

Ksenija 

Aiko van de gaer 

Quintessential memoir about being in your 20s

Everything I Know about Love

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