Description

A celebration of our female friendships, of our messy years, and of growing up together. Glittering with wit, heart, and humour, it’s a book to share with every woman you’ve ever been lucky enough to call a friend.

“Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learnt from my long-term friendships with women.”

I know that love can be loud and jubilant. It can be dancing in the swampy mud and the pouring rain at a festival and shouting “YOU ARE AMAZING” over the band. It’s laughing until you wheeze. It’s walking along the street together on a Saturday night and feeling an entire city is yours.

I also know that love is a pretty quiet thing. It’s lying on the sofa together drinking coffee, talking about where you’re going to go that morning to drink more coffee. It’s folding down pages of books you think they’d find interesting.

I know that love happens under the splendour of fireworks and sunsets, but also happens when you’re lying on blow-up airbeds in a childhood bedroom, sitting in A&E or in the queue for a passport.

*****

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING:

‘A book every girl in her 20s needs to read’

‘I’ll never stop recommending this book’

‘This is my comfort book! I LOOOOVE THIS BOOK TO MY CORE’

‘I wish I could read it for the first time again’

A Sunday Times bestseller, September 2022
TikTok Book Awards Winner, August 2023

Publisher Review

With courageous honesty, Alderton documents the highs and the lows – the sex, the drugs, the nightmare landlords, the heartaches and the humiliations. Deeply funny, sometimes shocking, and admirably open-hearted and optimistic * Daily Telegraph * Honest, funny and touching * Evening Standard * An effervescent guide to millennial life * i * Sure to leave you smiling * Elle Magazine * Funny, touching and wholly delightful * The Bookseller * Her fun and moving stories of bad dates and good friends melted my heart * Sunday Mirror * Weaving first-person stories and lists with email parodies and recipes, it’s Nora Ephron for the Tinder generation * Financial Times * I so recommend Dolly Alderton’s millennial memoir, which takes you on an uncomfortable journey through love and anxiety, to an unexpectedly happy ending. It’s just lovely * Eva Wiseman * Witty and warm, this is ostensibly a memoir about romantic love – and it is filled with plenty of stories about great and terrible men. But the most touching parts were on friendship, and how powerful and comforting the love of a good friend is * Stylist * If you’re ever feeling a tad down and need to climb into bed with a book, Emerald Street would prescribe Heartburn by Nora Ephron…Fortunately, it now has a millennial companion piece courtesy of writer and journalist, Dolly Alderton * Emerald Street * Alderton proves a razor-sharp observer of the shifting dynamics of long term female friendship * Mail on Sunday * Will have you hooked and nodding from the first page. Hilarious and moving * Grazia * A sensitive and funny account of growing up millennial. * The Observer * Funny, sexy and clever, Dolly Alderton is never less than dazzling on the travails of the human heart. She writes with breathtaking honesty about falling into lust and out of love, and each chapter reads like those late night conversations with your best girlfriend that you never want to end * Clover Stroud * I loved its truth, its self awareness, humour and most of all, its heart spilling generosity. The power of female friendships is such great, uncharted territory, and just when you think it’s going one (wonderful) way, it takes you somewhere infinitely more rugged, complicated and all the more affectingly tender. A joy. In short, it’s a stone cold classic * Sophie Dahl * Steeped in furiously funny accounts of one-night stands, ill-advised late-night taxi journeys up the M1, grubby flat-shares and the beauty of female friendships, as Alderton joyfully booze-cruises her way through her twenties * Metro * Hilarious and moving. Alderton is Nora Ephron for the millennial generation * Elizabeth Day * Exquisite, hilarious, I loved every page. I was dazzled by her warmth and wisdom: Dolly has written an extraordinary book that all women will be able to relate to * Emma Jane Unsworth * You will quite literally laugh and cry as Dolly crashes her way through her teens and twenties. This is about growing up and all the mess that comes with it. I loved it. * The Pool * Witty and insightful * Sunday Times Culture * If Nora Ephron is the cool aunt you wish you’d had, Dolly Alderton is your favourite cousin. I loved it and I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t; it’s a genuine delight * Kristen Roupenian, author of Cat Person * I thought I knew a lot about love. Not as much as Dolly. Read as soon as possible. * Sharon Horgan * I loved it so much, I wanted it to go on forever, Dolly Alderton is so gifted at making people care. A rare talent * Marian Keyes * Mesmerising, brilliant * Daily Telegraph * Alderton is an old soul – she has learned life lessons while not yet out of her twenties that many of us post-menopausal matrons are still struggling with. A wonderful writer, who will surely inspire a generation the way that Caitlin Moran did before her. * Julie Burchill * Very, very, very funny. Don’t hate me when I tell you that Everything I Know About Love is Sex And The City for millennials, because I mean it as high praise * Red * Poignant, witty, comic, and self-deprecating. A laugh-out-loud, lightning quick journey through the years that will resonate with anyone who’s ever been young and in love. * Daily Express *