I love Molly Wizenberg and I was so excited to read this book. However, I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as Homemade Life and Delancey. The subject matter, of course, is much more serious, but I found The Fixed Stars didn't read as well as her other books. I think it was the quotes and footnotes which felt distancing to me. The Fixed Stars is definitely a book of the heart.

Loved getting another offering from Molly Wizenberg. Such a personal and beautiful story. I read it in one sitting.

The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg is a memoir about marriage, motherhood and exploring sexual orientation.

This is Molly's third book, after one about her marriage to Brandon, followed by one about Brandon opening a restaurant. I loved both of those. This one is about the disintegration of her marriage when she is attracted to at attorney while serving jury duty. Molly pores over various relationships in her life while trying to figure out if she is gay or straight or defies a label. She openly talks to Brandon about her feelings and tries to work things out with him in marriage counseling.

It was very good.

This is a well-written memoir that explores the 'fixed' view the author had about her sexuality and life trajectory. The book brings up some interesting questions about how people perceive gender, 'settle' into their lives, and sometimes change in ways that don't work into their life plans. As a reader who is older than the author, with kids who find the gender fluidity of their friends totally normal, I found the memoir thought-provoking and definitely a great read to discuss with others. It is a great book club book. Her description of falling in love with her husband and having a child is important to understand how then being attracted to women would be confusing and unexpected. On the surface, the story of how she met a woman during jury duty and eventually decides to open her marriage and then get divorced could sound somewhat unbelievable, and the author explains how she had the same thoughts. Having written two books about her life and marriage and having a child, how can she explain having different attractions as a 'fully-formed' adult? Isn't sexual preference innate? How Molly Wizenberg answers these questions with her own experiences, therapy and the studies she quotes makes this book worth the read.

I first became acquainted with the author's lovely writing through her food blog, Orangette, and have enjoyed her other memoirs. This one, about her evolving sexuality and the dissolution of her marriage, is particularly honest, painful and deeply felt. Never a particularly fast reader, I finished this over the course of a long afternoon, feeling as though I was listening to a friend fill me in on her life. I highly recommend this memoir for any public library and bookstore. My thanks to Abrams, the author and NetGalley for allowing me to read it ahead of time so that I can start recommending it!

I loved this memoir from Molly Wizenberg. It's a great exploration of sexuality, marriage, and family. Wizenberg did such a great job of portraying the layers involved in realizing your relationship isn't right and exploring new ones. I will definitely be purchasing this for myself and for my library when it is released.

I found his to be VERY interesting, very frank, and truly honest about the complexities of relationships, sexuality, and just how "not simple" it all is. I don't typically read memoirs but this will one I'm thinking about for quite some time. Very much enjoyed this author's story.

I should begin by saying I will read anything Molly Wizenberg writes. I have been a fan of hers since her blogging days and have since devoured her books and her podcast. I was thrilled to receive an eARC of this from NetGalley and could not wait to dive in.

As a longtime reader of Wizenberg, the central story to this memoir was one I was acquainted with, but she does a wonderful job of shepherding her reader along the journey and applying both personal depth and research to her experience. She shares some hard truths about marriage and motherhood that not everyone is brave enough to admit and shines an honest light on many complex issues involved with sexuality, relationships, and motherhood. The writing bounces around in time and topic at many points, which can be jarring to the reader, but works in concert with Wizenberg's own disjointed feelings, thoughts, and experiences as she navigates her newly burgeoning reality.

This book is enjoyable to readers who have followed Wizenberg from her blog to her food and restaurant writing to now, but is also perfectly accessible and wonderful for readers who are new to her writing. It is an important book contributing to the sharing of LBTQ+ experiences.

Beautiful, heartbreaking, but also astonishing in it's depictions of the messiness of life and the ongoing struggles of figuring it all out. I was moved constantly by this memoir, both by the honesty with which Wizenberg describes her journey with herself and her dissolution of her marriage and paving the way forward, but also by her apt choices in quotations and thoughts from other works or writers. A lovely book, and a necessary one, too.