So Much for Love: How I Survived a Toxic Relationship

Alright, I'm not gonna get too sappy with this, I swear. Okay, maybe a bit. I just knew when I saw this book existed that the me I was 5-6 years ago needed this so badly. I saw way too much of myself in these pages and it made me relive one of the worst parts of my life BUT it was so worth it! It's so validating and comforting to see that someone else has had similar experiences and come out on top.

I loved Sophie's art style here and found her use of comedy hilarious and relatable all at once. Her very unflattering caricatures of herself feeling at her worst are so funny and accurate to how gross we feel we look at the worst times in our lives.

If you've ever dated or even known someone manipulative and toxic, this book just perfectly illustrates what life is like with them and the insanity it is getting over them. But, if you're like me, reading something like this can be exactly what you need to continue processing that experience and feel better in the end.

This was a tough read, but a worthwhile one. Part memoir and part self-help, So Much for Love details the author's experience with an immensely toxic and emotionally/mentally abusive relationship before moving on to things she has learned in therapy and throughout her healing process, resources, and tips for readers who may suspect they, too, are in an unhealthy relationship.

While she delivers the story with a lot of brevity and candidness (and really cute art), the relationship-based bits of So Much for Love are hard to read at times. As a fellow abuse survivor, there were moments that hit way too close to home, but it was cathartic, knowing from the get-go that the author wrote this book from a perspective of someone who had escaped that terrible situation and is healing.

So many domestic abuse depictions in stories feature the beginning and the middle, but not the end - or if they do feature the end, it goes into very little detail thereafter. We see the trauma, but not its long-lasting effects or the healing process afterwards. That's not the case here: the abuse depictions only last (for the most part) until somewhere around the halfway mark, and the rest is all healing, and I loved that a lot. It was so heartwarming to read the things Sophie Lambda has learned in her time since leaving her ex, and I was so proud of her (as well as some other important figures in her story) by the end of it that I just wanted to give her a big hug. ♥

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this review copy in exchange for an honest review!