In ‘I Never Said I Loved You’ Rhik Samadder has written a brave, wise and moving memoir about his struggles with mental health, the malevolent shadow of childhood abuse, his undeveloped relationship with his father and his rejection of the women who’ve loved him. If this sounds grim, well, it is in part but it is also often very funny and sometimes uplifting too.
What makes this memoir stand out is the excellence of Samadder’s writing, his absurd sense of humour and his searing honesty. Every chapter ends with a letter to someone whom he believes he’s failed, a generous apology, an acknowledgement of any hurt caused, and the desire to move forward.
Whether or not the reader is someone who can currently identify with any of Samadder’s difficulties matters little. This book does not set out to explicitly guide others but we learn much about coping with depression through the situations and circumstances he describes. It’s easy to recognise that his is not an extraordinary story, just one extraordinarily well told.
My thanks to NetGalley and Headline for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

As a person who fortunately never suffered from depression, I never gave it that much thought or tried to empathise with it. Only after one of my closest friends told me he started seeing a psychologist because he feels like he might be suffering from it, I started to pay more attention. And I think that after reading "I Never Said I Loved You" I finally can see the impact depression can make on one' s life and the importance of not taking it lightly.

The story presented in this book is written in a painfully witty and clever way, but you can sense the seriousness of the situation in every joke. I enjoyed the honesty and self-reflection that Samadder had to have in order to look back at his past and trying to understand it in retrospect. The book must have been a therapeutic way for the author to forgive himself and people that done him wrong. I am sure this story can help and make those in a similar situation feel less alone.

Even though this book gave me a serious emotional kick, it was so worth it. There wasn't a part that would feel out of place or not thought through and I have enjoyed every chapter. Rhik Samadder proved, at least for me, that even if he failed at many careers, he truly knows how to write and I am hoping for more books in the future.

Having read Rhik Samadder's fantastically funny Guardian columns, along with an extract from I Never Said I Loved You about a comically failed audition, I wasn't prepared for the book to be a pretty dark memoir about abuse and depression. A difficult read, but very worthwhile. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

I laughed, I cried, I cringed, I empathised. If you read this you will go through just about every known emotion. Such a brilliant read, brutish in its honesty and absolutely outstanding.