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A Memoir of Three Loves
by Sarah Hepola
The New York Times bestselling author of Blackout excavates the romantic entanglements that defined her adulthood—an electrifying and unflinching account of the ways we choose love, it chooses us, and how those choices build a life.
"I'm scared I only want what I can't have," I said.
"Oh baby," he said. "It's the only thing there is to want."
Sarah Hepola wanted so much: a big career; travel and adventure; deep relationships; passion. Having realized so many of those desires, she also grieved the ways her life was not what she'd always imagined it would be. Did I want too much, she wondered. Did I make the wrong choices? Love the wrong people?
In The Only Thing There Is To Want, Hepola revisits three complicated love affairs from her past, seeking to understand how they might have kept her from the life she'd envisioned, but also made her who she is. Examining her own decisions, Hepola probes the question: Is love ever really a choice?
This dazzling portrait of the mirages of modern romance captures the paradox of desire: wanting propels us forward and holds us back. Funny, achingly tender, and fearlessly intimate, The Only Thing There Is to Want is about discovering the beauty in the life you've built.
"Sarah Hepola's witty, candid, and gripping portrait of modern love plumbs the depths of desire, heartbreak, and a form of grief we don't often name—capturing something essential about the search for connection in our disjointed age. The Only Thing There Is to Want reckons with the gift and curse of dating as a Gen X woman—raised to believe anything was possible, and finding that what she wants most remains just out of reach." —Ada Calhoun, New York Times bestselling author of Why We Can't Sleep and Crush
"Sarah Hepola delivers another dazzling, insightful, original, and hilarious memoir. In The Only Thing There is to Want, Hepola questions the nature of long-lasting romantic love, generously guiding readers through a deep-dive into three loves of her life. Readers will have their hearts broken alongside Hepola and grow hoarse cheering for her satisfaction and liberation. Best of all, readers will revel in Hepola's singular voice and hard-won wisdom, as she proves that, when it comes to memoir, she's one of the best to ever do it." —Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author of Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life
This information about The Only Thing There Is to Want was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sarah Hepola's essays have appeared in the New York Times magazine, Texas Monthly, The Atlantic, The Cut, Elle, The Guardian, and Salon, where she was a longtime editor. Her first book, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank To Forget, was a New York Times bestseller. She's the creator and host of the Texas Monthly narrative podcast America's Girls, about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, and the co-host of the weekly culture podcast, Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em. Hepola lives in Dallas, Texas where she is a staff writer for the Dallas Morning News.
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