‘Conversations on Love ❤️’ by Natasha Lunn
🌟🌟🌟🌟 4/5
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After years of feeling that love was always out of reach, journalist Natasha Lunn set out to understand how relationships work and evolve over a lifetime. She turned to authors and experts to learn about their experiences, as well as drawing on her own, asking: How do we find love? How do we sustain it? And how do we survive when we lose it?
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💫 What would I say to my younger self? Keep your feet well planted. You know it’s not just about who you find, it’s also who you’re going to be. Love is not a state of enthusiasm. It’s a verb. It implies action, demonstration, ritual, practices, communication, expression. It’s the ability to take responsibility of one’s own behaviour. Responsibility is freedom 💫
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This was a different type of read for me, not only in terms of genre but also writing style. The book is laid out as ‘conversations’ with lots of different people and they discuss the different types of connections you have with people (ie. lovers, friendships, children), how you can find love, how we can experience it, how it affects people differently and more importantly, how we can sustain it.

The book wasn’t just conversations between these people, but also descriptions of the authors own experiences and reflections of her life. It was a very emotional and honest read and I’m truly grateful that @natashachloelunn shares this with us. It’s one that I will forever recommend as I feel everyone will be able to relate to it in some aspect.
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Thanks to @netgalley, @penguinukbooks and @natashachloelunn for the advanced copy! Publication date 15th July 2021 📖

What an emotional book! It was a pleasure reading both Natasha and all her interviewees experiences in love and life. Beautiful writing and beautiful content.

This book is unlike anything I've ever read before, I love the conversation style of the writing! There are some really fantastic lessons to be learnt and things to take in from the text from some people I really admire and it's a book I'll continue to dip in and out of. It sort of reminds me of the Amazon Prime series Modern Love. - the variety of topics discussed is what originally drew me to this book, after all we will experience most, if not all of them. It's incredibly honest at times and very uplifting which is definitely needed at the moment.

I thought this was going to be a book of essays so was a bit surprised to find long sections on the author's life, punctuated at intervals by conversations with various experts. There was a lot of useful and helpful information on sustaining long relationships and dealing with loss, but the structure made it a bit hard to follow them and note the important details.

https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2021/07/14/book-review-natasha-lunn-conversations-on-love/

<i>And yet, whether we think about it or not, love leaks in and out of all of our lives, every day, freely, cruelly and beautifully</i>

This was different kind of book for me - a series of interviews / discussions with various people from all of walks of life speaking about the types of love we have in our lives and how they affect us. From familial, to romantic, to friendship, how we find love and how we sustain it, to some sections about the harder parts of those relationships like grief. I enjoyed this for the most part and I felt especially strongly about the conversation with Roxane Gay, her words really resonated with me.

<i>Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced digital copy in exchange for my honest review</i>

This is a unmissable, fascinating, and absolutely riveting read from Natasha Lunn, profoundly moving, thoughtful, sensitive and empathetic in its exploration of a subject that lies at the heart of what it is to be human, our capacity to be happy, fulfilled, and being able to live a life worth living. Given the importance of love, it is surprising that we know and understand it so little, this wise tome goes a long way towards addressing this. Lunn provides us with intimate details of her personal life, whilst interviewing and discussing the subject of love from a widely disparate range of people and their differing perspectives.

This includes the likes of Alain de Botton, Philippa Perry, Dolly Alderton, Lisa Taddeo, Candice Carty-Williams, Stephen Grosz and Roxane Gay, and their thoughts on becoming comfortable with the possibility of being alone, taking your time when it comes to falling in love, being vulnerable, the critical importance of friendships, loneliness, loss, being a parent, and coming to terms with change. It begins with what most often occupies our minds when it comes to love, romantic love, the idea of love, not the truth of it, it seeks a definition of love, the need to move beyond the limits and rigidities in the minds of so many. It focuses on learning to recalibrate our minds and expanding our definition of love, moving beyond the romantic idealisation, fantasies and expectations that cause us not to see each other. To start seeing ourselves and others with more honesty, more accepting of flaws that make us all too human, and becoming comfortable in being who we are, so that we can live our lives more truthfully and authentically.

The focus is on increasing our number of connections with others and the different forms of love they bring into our lives, grounding us with our friends, family, paying attention to our spiritual sides and increasing our links to the wider community. This contributes to our mental health, resilience and happiness, making us more able to cope with the challenges that are going to come our way. The book is organised in 3 parts, how do we find love, how do we sustain love and how do we survive losing love?, followed by a conclusion with its overview. I was impressed with the range of people Lunn drew on, the heartbreaks, the grief, providing wider perspectives on love, such as parents who have faced the unbearable loss of a child, others who have lost their partners, and someone who is no longer able to walk.

I think readers might well be surprised at just how much this book will resonate with their life experiences, at how we can so often be our own worst enemies when it comes to allowing a multitude of forms of love and happiness enter our lives. I cannot imagine anyone who would not be drawn into this sensitive, yet forensic, research into a subject that is so littered with misunderstandings, the paucity of knowledge in our understanding of it. A superb and eye opening book that I will be buying for others, and which I recommend highly to everyone. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

I received an e-book copy for free from the publishers and NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Wow, what can I say about this. It covers so many areas of love; Romantic, Sibling, Friends, Children, Parental & Self. Whilst also covering areas of grief and loss.

There were so many areas of this book that just resonated with me and I cannot wait to recommend this to friends, family and strangers.

Throughout this book Natasha reflects on her own experiences whilst also conducting interviews with various other people; authors, doctors, psychoanalysts. Which really helps with the diversity of the subject matter.

I will pre-warn you there is discussion about death, miscarriage and slight discussions of relationship abuse.

Some of my standout moments of this book are:

'If I don't message for a few days, in's not because I don't care, it's because I'm a bit overwhelmed. Or sometimes because depression makes me feel I don't have anything interesting to say.'

'We achieve love by overcoming our narcissism.'

'Acknowledging your brokenness, pain and insufficiency is a rather romantic thing to do'

In a word: stunning. From the acknowledgement all the way to the final word, every moment resonated with me on some level and inspired me to think about the ways I view love, and crucially the ways I wish I thought about it. An incredibly insightful collection, and Natasha's personal commentary between interviews are just as thoughtful and valuable to the narrative as the range of thoughts and voices offered. Cannot wait for publication day - I'll be buying a physical copy for myself to re-read probably more than a few times and copies to gift to friends I know will need to hear some of the wise, introspective advice offered within this book. I'll also be recommending the book in the next issue of The Know's weekly newsletter, because I truly think everyone will find value in reading this.

This book was a sensational read. Sometimes in life, a book comes along and you know that it is going to help you, heal you and uplift you. I wonder whether if I had read this 10 years ago, I would have gotten so much from it, but this book captured my attention and spoke about topics I so desperately needed to hear about.

Conversations on Love gave me so much food for thought. I, myself have experienced grieve and loss and the stories relayed by Natasha were as complex and profound as I recall and still feel.

Natasha’s honesty with each of the issues explored was incredible. I loved her capacity for empathy with her guests. Each one was like a conversation with a friend.

I also loved the analogy that love comes in so many forms. It’s such a powerful thing to read. Hearing how her relationship with her husband has really developed through their journey to conceive had me in tears. Her personal journey was incredibly hinesy and evoked so much emotion, I was hoping throughout for a baby for her and her husband. His response at their scan towards the end of the book had me crying and wishing no one ever had to suffer that anxiety around pregnancy and that everyone had a partner like she did to support them if it happened.

I will be recommending this book to anyone who will listen and will be gifting it for birthdays and Christmases until everyone has a copy on their shelf. I wish I had a hard copy of it! It’s one that I will absolutely buying so that I have this and can refer back to it when times may get tough.

An easy 5 stars!

A beautiful book reflecting on love in it's many varied forms. The structure of the book hangs around the author's own experiences of romantic relationships, friendships and the challenges she faced conceiving. She interviews authors and therapists including Dolly Alderton, Lisa Taddeo, Phillipa Perry and Esther Perel who discuss everything from sexual relationships to sibling relationships and how we live with loss. . The interviews are short reflective Q and As which fit seamlessly into the authors beautiful exploration of her own experiences. The section on how friendships change throughout our lives particularly resonated and moved me. I also found the words of Greg Wise on his deceased sister particularly moving and how speaking of death is an act of love. Highly recommended and a book I will return to.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review a digital ARC

Full disclosure: I’m not a romantic person. So am not entirely sure why I thought I would enjoy this book; but when I saw the list of contributors including some of my favourite authors, Dolly Alderton and Lisa Taddeo I was hooked.
Natasha Lunn has set out to explore how relationships work and develop over time and how love can exist in so many different forms. She asked various contributors the big questions we all want answers to: How do we find love? How do we keep it alive? And how can we cope when we lose love?
In her book “Conversations on Love’ she takes a deep dive into the subject and finds answers to numerous questions on so many different aspects of love - including loneliness, vulnerability, and the one I personally found most interesting, unrealistic expectations. The book is so insightful, surprising, beautifully written and the observations it contains definitely deserve repeated re-reading. Usually I find some non-fiction books to be a bit dry and fact laden but this book is a joy to read and the author’s curiosity is infectious - her choice of contributors is inspired.
My only criticism of this book is where was it back when I met my first love, when I got married and subsequently divorced?
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in relationships (which is pretty much everyone I know).
Huge thanks to Natasha Lunn, Penguin Books Ltd and NetGalley for the opportunity to read the e-arc ahead of publication.

There are some stunning lines of clarity in this book that will stick with me forever.

Overall, a wonderful meditation on love and it's many different shapes.

The book you didn't know you needed. Conversations on Love isn't just about romantic love but love in friendships, love in family, losing love, finding it, and everything in between. I made sure to keep a pen by my side whenever I picked this up for a bit of nonfiction because there are so many powerful quotes that resonated with me.

From Natasha's insights to her interesting and in-depth interviews with countless professionals, you get a plethora of different views pertaining to the innate feeling we can't help but yearn for-love. I learned so much and will definitely be applying what I learned to my daily life, not only with my fiancé but my friends and family. A must read.

Really beautiful set of writing and interviews showing some of the many forms that love comes in. It's a warm book that lets you sit and reflect along with it, definitely recommend.

Natasha Lunn looks to various writers within conversations on love. Suggesting that love comes in different forms. This is a great must-read of a memoir.

A wonderful collection of illuminating interviews with prominent writers, philosophers and therapists of today among others, woven with honest accounts of the authors own experiences with love and its various forms. From her changing friendships to the struggle of conception, and the pain of life and love not flowing in the way she thought it would. A warm hug of a book, readable, comforting and enlightening. I am recommending it to everyone I know.

Natasha Lunn's "Conversations on Love" is an illuminating collection of thoughts, theories and practices that help to add more nuance to that age-old debate: "what is love?"

Lunn thinks about love in family, in romantic relationships, in friendships and in (and for) oneself, having discussions with experts, friends and people who have taught her a few things about life to come to conclusions that leave the reader feeling ready to understand, receive and give love.

I enjoyed the reflection on love for single women, who are at once at the centre of and outside of the societal conversation on who deserves love and how to get it. Self-love is preached everywhere, but in Lunn's book it is presented in an accessible way. No one is blamed for not loving themselves enough. Everyone deserves -- and will get -- the love they need.

It is a slow read, because it is not a novel and each question that is explored is a mini-thesis on an important topic. Keep a pencil and notebook nearby.

I believe it is a book I will come back to at least once in the next year or so, as I take stock of what love has been before and what I want it to be next.

Firstly, thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Natasha Lunn’s non-fiction about the different types of love we experience, find, lose and miss throughout our lifetime. Conversations on Love includes anecdotes from Lunn’s own life as well as interviews with a host of other writers. It’s an emotional, relatable and raw discussion about love and how to cherish it.

While reading Conversations on Love, parts made me smile, tear up, and reflect on my own experiences. It reminded me of how I felt reading Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love last year – Dolly is included in Conversations on Love too. Even though I haven’t personally experienced many of the topics talked about in this book, I still found it relatable and, in a way, comforting.

Reading this was like receiving a warm hug and a therapy session all at once. It was like Lunn knew exactly what I’ve needed to hear all of my life and put it into this wonderful book. The questions she asked the guests in her book were incredibly insightful and the answers she received were deeply moving.

What I loved most about Lunn’s writing is that the book doesn’t just discuss romantic love, which is what I first thought this book would be about. It’s about love between friends, parents and children, siblings, even the strangers you meet every now and then that make your day brighter. It’s an ode to the human condition and how, ultimately, all we really need are good people around us who support us and cherish us no matter what.

thank you so much to the publisher and netgalley for sending me this book in exchange for an honest review.

this book did take me a bit of time to work my way through, but i did really like some of the essays once i got into them! i’m not typically a big non-fiction fan but some of these essays were really lovely, with one of my favourites being by Dolly Alderton. i liked that this book covered all types of love, and think i will reread some of the essays by themselves!

Thank you to Viking and NetGalley for this ARC.

Typically with non-fiction (especially self-help) books, I have to be in the right headspace for the content I'm delving into. Unfortunately, I've been battling on with reading Conversations on Love for quite some time and it's time to admit defeat.

I adore the premise and I am so impressed with the calibre of authors involved; some of my absolute faves like Lisa Taddeo and Dolly Alderton have contributed which is incredible. I have had a flick through and read the conversations with my favourite/most familiar authors and loved what I was reading.

This is the kind of book I may dip in and out of or come back to later, but for now I'm leaving this with a 3-star rating judged on what I've read so far and DNF-ing until I'm in the right mindset for this sort of thing.