jesus fucking christ

don't like the prose/narration. i did not care

This book...oh, my God. She's short, but she packs a fucking punch. "Acts of Desperation" follows an unnamed narrator who on the first page meets a man and falls into a "brief, all-consuming" romance with him before he abruptly dumps her. She resolves to get him back and keep him by any means necessary, even if it means degrading and destroying herself.

The writing in this book is so beautiful and harsh at the same time. I highlighted so much in this book, such a range of lines: lines that I related to, lines that I thought were interesting, lines that made this character make sense to me (because she often did not, which made her seem painfully real).

Through this narrator's voice, the reader is exposed to her confessional, her literal desperation for male attention and male love, her love addiction, her mental illness. The way at times, this man she claimed to love so fully did not even seem like someone she liked, and yet she simply couldn't be without him- without *someone* in general - God. You have a front row seat to all of it and it is sometimes so brutal that one must set the book down and just decompress.

However, in the brutality of this narrative, there are moments so poignant and relatable that I couldn't get my highlighter/pen cap off fast enough to highlight or annotate. There were parts of this that also felt too smart for me, things that didn't and do not make sense to me still, and I don't know if that's because I'm not smart enough or if it's just a reflection of what a mess this character is?

Overall, obviously, I loved this. I loved the commentary and chronicling of this woman's case of love addiction & other things throughout that I won't mention at the risk of giving things away inadvertently.

 I fell head over heels immediately with the main character and her flaws and I did not want her to leave my side. As she isn't named in the book I will refer to her as M.

M is deeply troubled on many levels but she is acutely aware of this. The book chronicles her journey with many challenges including self harm, alcoholism, body image issues and toxic and abusive relationships. This book is painful and honest and raw and is one that will stay with me for a while. Nolan weaves the story so gently and carefully that subtleties of the toxic occurrences roll over you slowly as you progress through.

While this is a book with a lot of heavy hitting topics there is a sense of hope and growth that slowly builds throughout. I definitely was able to see certain aspects of myself in M and am sure many others will feel that closeness.

I listened to the book as an audiobook and it worked perfectly as it is mainly a monologue of sorts. The narrator's voice and flow suited perfectly and it is already one of my top audiobooks of 2021.