Elizabeth Gilbert returns with an offering that is devastatingly vulnerable. I devoured this book in hours, compelled to stay alongside the author on a journey that is equal parts heartbreak and epiphany. A narrative of searing self-awareness and painful honesty sits alongside intimate poems, conversations with God, and personal doodles and drawings. Her story is incredibly compelling. She freely shares the lessons she’s learned through grief, heartbreak, and addiction, and is generous in passing on the wisdom she’s gleaned from the rooms that led to her eventual recovery. I’m looking forward to gathering with my best girlfriends for an autumnal book club to share and unpack this powerful work. Thank you, NetGalley, for the early preview of a book that just might save lives.

I was delighted to receive an ARC from the publisher. I was always very invested in the story of Liz and Rayya's relationship - so romantic, right?! I didn't imagine it would end quite like this, but when I take my rose-tinted glasses off, I now can't see how it would have ended any other way. Having been one of the original 'Eat, Pray, Love,' girls (I don't know what it is about that book, looking back, but it struck a chord) and a fan of her follow-up 'Committed,' and two historical novels, I felt like I knew Liz, but in this beautiful story she strips herself bare and looks at herself and her relationship with Rayya with unforgiving, sober eyes.

One poet - Anne Sexton? wrote 'There is no use in loving the dying, I have tried.' This book is proof of that, that there are some rivers - as per the title - you can't step in, or that you can't step in twice. When Rayya is diagnosed with cancer, she and Liz admit their feelings for each other and fall in love, but not the kind of Beaches/Boys on the Side love you might expect, an amour fou characterised by addiction, screaming, illegal activity and 'eating like a ten-year-old at a birthday party.' Fun, but only up to a point.

The drawings and the mystical between-chapter poems addressed to 'my love' or 'my darling,' don't add much for me, but they do provide breathing spaces from the intensity of the narrrative, which will occasionally have you gasping for breath as if you were one of these women. Interestingly, the 'Love' lady has now been single for five or six years. Who knows what her next chapter will be?