Jaclyn’s Review: Saving Sara: A Memoir of Food Addiction by Sara Somers

Saving Sara: A Memoir of Food Addiction
written by Sara Somers
published by She Writes Press, 2020

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo, Target, Walmart, Book Depository, Goodreads

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Did I enjoy this book? I was surprised to find that I really did enjoy this book! Memoirs are not usually my preferred genre, but I was interested in this particular topic. I was completely fascinated by the life the author lived–from her childhood with parents in academia, to college, to traveling Europe during the 1960s, and life in a Bohemian California–every part was mesmerizing! I know this story was to be about the author’s battle with food addiction, and it was. Somers is raw and unfiltered in sharing her experience. However, her life story would be worthy of a book entirely on its own! What an incredible story!

Would I recommend it? I found this book fascinating and would love to recommend it. I would caution readers that this has plenty of triggers, so proceed with caution. Even if you aren’t interested in reading about food addiction, read this book for the amazing description of life in America and Europe during the formative 1960s and 1970s. Amazing!
 

 

About the book – from Goodreads: For nearly fifty years, Sara Somers suffered from untreated food addiction. In this brutally honest and intimate memoir, Somers offers readers an inside view of a food addict’s mind, showcasing her experiences of obsessive cravings, compulsivity, and powerlessness regarding food.

Saving Sara chronicles Somers’s addiction from childhood to adulthood, beginning with abnormal eating as a nine-year-old. As her addiction progresses in young adulthood, she becomes isolated, masking her shame and self-hatred with drugs and alcohol. Time and again, she rationalizes why this time will be different, only to have her physical cravings lead to ever-worse binges, to see her promises of doing things differently next time broken, and to experience the amnesia that she—like every addict—experiences when her obsession sets in again.

Even after Somers is introduced to the solution that will eventually end up saving her, the strength of her addiction won’t allow her to accept her disease. Twenty-six more years pass until she finally crawls on hands and knees back to that solution, and learns to live life on life’s terms. A raw account of Somers’s decades-long journey, Saving Sara underscores the challenges faced by food addicts of any age—and the hope that exists for them all.

 

 

 

* This post contains affiliate links.

** This post first appeared on Every Free Chance Books (everyfreechance.com) on October 26, 2020.