Rachel Resnick's Reviews of "Love Junkie"

REVIEWS and ADVANCE PRAISE

Chick Lit: Love Junkie by Rachel Resnick
Posted on Saturday, June 27 @ 10:14:52 EST by tim milfull [FULL TEXT]

'Love Junkie' by Rachel Resnick
Authors who were sexual addicts write of love, sex and shame.
By Marion Winik, December 8, 2008 [FULL TEXT]

The pitfalls of drinking turtle blood — Hephzibah Anderson discovers some universal truths in one woman's lurid love life
By Hephzibah Anderson, The Observer, Sunday 11 January 2009 [FULL TEXT]

Isle of Man Today
Book Reveiw By KATE WHITING, Date: 22 January 2009 [FULL TEXT]

A clipping of the book review that appeared in the January 09 issue of the Sacramento Book Review

Love Junkie: A Memoir of Love and Sex Addiction by Rachel Resnick
By William Leith — 23.01.09 [FULL TEXT]

Secrets and love junkies
By Staff Reporter 17/01/09 [For FULL TEXT - LOGIN or SUBSCRIBE to IRISH NEWS]

SF Gate Book review: 'Love Junkie'
Christina Eng, Special to The Chronicle Friday, December 12, 2008 [FULL TEXT]

Making a Habit of Mr. Wrong Rachel Resnick’s brutally honest memoir recalls romance gone repeatedly awry — by Sara Vilkomerson
It’s not just the title that makes Rachel Resnick’s Love Junkie so incredibly hard to put down. There’s an urgency to Ms. Resnick’s writing... [FULL TEXT]

Love Is the Drug: Memoir of Sexual Addiction LOVE JUNKIE Reviewed by Lynn Harris
There is plenty of sex in Rachel Resnick's memoir, Love Junkie. It's true intimacy -- to say nothing of actual love -- that's sadly, searingly, lacking. Resnick's bleak childhood... [FULL TEXT]

"LOVE JUNKIE"GONNA HAVE TO FACE IT, YOU'RE ADDICTED TO ... By MARTHA FRANKEL
Nobody grows up hoping to become an alcoholic or a heroin user; people don't sit around thinking of ways to become compulsive eaters or gamblers... [FULL TEXT]

Sex Addiction: Ooh! Aah! Eek! Ugh. Zzzz ... Ooh!
By CARLIN ROMANO — November 28, 2008
Some people just like to do it again and again and again... [FULL TEXT]

As Featured in Publisher's Weekly

Love Junkie: A Memoir Rachel Resnick. Bloomsbury, $24 (256p) ISBN 978-1-59691-494-0
In her raw account of love gone wrong, L.A. journalist Resnick (Go West Young F*cked-Up Chick) describes her descent into self-debasement [ FULL TEXT ]

As Featured in Kirkus Reviews

Resnick, Rachel — LOVE JUNKIE: A Memoir
X-rated memoir by novelist Resnick (Go West Young F*cked-Up Chick, 1999)
Sliding toward 50, the author takes stock of a life so sordid and filled with so much need that almost every page overflows with sadness and desperation. Her father Henry, a well-educated librarian... [ FULL TEXT ]

Love Junkie - Reviewed in the Topanga Messenger Online
Arts by Flavia Potenza, December 18, 2008 [FULL TEXT]

Advance Praise For Love Junkie: A Memoir

““With staggering honesty, raw and unsparing humor, novelist Rachel Resnick outs herself as a love junkie.”
— Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

“Resnick’s prose is memorable, the situations she describes unforgettable…An important memoir about romantic/sexual addiction and the potential cures.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“[A] raw account of love gone wrong…Most important in terms of survival in this painfully honest memoir, Resnick found the wherewithal through a support group to heal and reground herself.”
— Publishers Weekly

“…vivid, meticulous…an important addition to the group project of our messed-up generation, the retelling of our story.”
— Marian Winik, The Los Angeles Times

“A painful story that is fascinating, painful, and in a word, addictive.”
— Zoe Ruderman, Cosmopolitan

“Resnick’s bleak childhood rivals the addiction-gothic of Mary Karr…Resnick has the twin gifts of wise hindsight and wry irony. Combined, they allow her to tell a tale both grim and enlightened, free of the leaden boilerplate of recovery.” — Lynn Harris, Barnes & Noble Review

“It’s not just the title that makes Rachel Resnick’s Love Junkie so incredibly hard to put down. There’s an urgency to Ms. Resnick’s writing, a please-you-must-let-me-just-get-this-off-my-chest quality that begins on page one—when the author discovers her ex-boyfriend has broken into her house and destroyed her computer (including a novel in progress) the night before Valentine’s Day—and continues throughout the next 240 pages.”
— Sara Wilkomerson, NY Observer

“To describe this book as soul-baring is to undersell its bloodied candour. Its revelations are gynaecological, its prose thrumming…[A] cocktail of obsession, scattershot humour and self-excoriating insights…Most of us will recognize some fleeting elements of our own romantic pasts in Resnick’s lurid confessions.”
— Hephzibah Anderson, The Observer (guardian.co.uk.com)

“Resnick's riveting memoir is about a rather hellish east coast childhood, a childhood so damaging and well-described that you can't imagine her not going west. Even if painful memoirs aren't your cuppa, it's easy to get hooked on Resnick's writing.”
— Tracy Quan, www.guardian.co.uk

“Gripping…a brave account.”
— William Leith, Evening Standard (UK)

“Rachel Resnick has written a heroic and heartbreaking memoir about sex and romance addiction. Rachel puts it ALL out there in this beautiful memoir, and she’s going to help a lot of people in the process.”
— Benoit Denizet-Lewis, www.americaanonymous.com

“It takes an enormous amount of courage for Resnick to put her life story on the page. Her writing is as stripped, raw and intense as her emotions…This is real life. It's Resnick's life to be sure, but there are elements of despair, hope and the need for love, recognition and acceptance that are part of all of our lives…She still retains the passion, intensity and willfulness that have been present since her childhood…Ultimately these are the traits that make her a great writer.”
— Kelly Hartog, Jerusalem Post

“Riveting…Resnick writes about her Dickensian past with no plea for sympathy.”
— Martha Frankel, NY Post

“Rachel is a victim of that most modern malaise: addiction. But rather than being hooked on drink or drugs, her craving is for the happily-ever-after fairytale ending society conditions us to expect. But as Resnick illustrates in her memoir, it’s a hollow dream often accompanied by obsessive, irrational behavior.”
— Glamour UK’s Glamreads

“A rotten childhood leads a needy girl to the wrong man – over and over and over. Rachel Resnick has used that sad truth to drive Love Junkie, a memoir that’s sick and poignant, agonizing and hiliarious, and, alas, true.”
— Jesse Kornbluth, headbutler.com

“Screw the faux-ness of reality TV – Resnick’s book is a no-holds-barred, raw-as-it-gets car crash of searing prose.”
— Peter Davis’ Status Update, papermag.com

“Over 200 pages of gory self-destruction.”
— Vanessa Juarez, Entertainment Weekly

“Excellent…”
— Carlin Romano, The Chronicle of Higher Education

“The freelance writer’s recounting of her addiction to sex and toxic men is no party at the Playboy Mansion.”
— Martin Zimmerman, signsonsandiego.com

“In Love Junkie, Resnick recalls her tumultuous relationships... She confesses to decades of bad boyfriends and even worse breakups, and berates herself for trying so hard, for holding on when she should ultimately let go, for caring... And, unfortunately... she mistakes sex for love... Her stories are both horrifying and compelling... The voyeurs in us emerge.”
— Christina Eng, San Francisco Chronicle

“Searing…Resnick bravely explores such universal issues as the loss of intimacy and the unfulfilled longing for someone to love us just as we are.”
— Malina Saval, Heeb

“Haunting, powerful and like a fist to the heart.”
— Caroline Leavitt, damemagazine.com

“Resnick mainlines the hardest of all the hard wants in her raw memoir.”
— Austin Chronicle

“She does not apologize for her errors, but simply lays them out, their truth speaking powerfully to anyone who’s deliberately chosen someone we know, somewhere deep down, is bad for us.”
— Rachel Kramer Bussel, lustylady.blogspot.com

“This brutally honest account of Resnick’s personal compulsion toward sex to fill the void of her horrific childhood is a must read for anyone who seeks to understand love and sex obsession…Resnick sheds a bright light on a very dark subject.”
— Jennifer Storm, thesecondroad.org

“I was blown away by the courage of Rachel Resnick. Her ability to write about her life without any semblance of self-pity was remarkable to me.”
— Sydney L. Murray, Vision Magazine: Catalyst for Conscious LIving

“Love Junkie is a brave, compelling memoir/confessional of the author's decades of seeking love and finding chaos and hot sex with damaged men within destructive, degrading, dangerous relationships. I couldn't put this book down…riveting reading, highly recommended.”
— Joan Price, betterthanieverexpected.blogspot.com

“Love Junkie delves into the bowels of love and examines all of its mutated incarnations.”
— Paul Anderson, Flaunt Magazine

“…a gut-wrenching memoir…The fact that Resnick emerges on the other side as a whole person is a miracle and the book is a gift to all who read it.”
— Flavia Potenza, The Messenger

“…as shockingly honest as it is revealing.”
— Brent Diggins, AZ Weekly

“Reading Love Junkie is like watching a sleepwalker taking a stroll on a freeway. All you can do is pray. Gorgeously written, piercingly honest.”
— Janet Fitch, White Oleander and Paint It Black

“A deeply true, wholly aching account of the dangerous way we live now – Love Junkie is great fun to read, and finally fully redemptive. Rachel Resnick brings a light, delightful touch to a hard subject, and creates a great, relatable, readable memoir.”
— Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation, Bitch, and More, Now, Again

“Insightful and heartbreaking, but also wonderfully comedic in its gutsy honesty, this is a powerful and beautiful memoir.”
— Jonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir!

“Love Junkie travels tenderly and boldly into the despair, isolation, and tenacity of sex and love addiction. Rachel Resnick’s gift for language and storytelling craft a vivid picture of her journey and her heart shines pure.”
— Kelly McDaniel, author of Ready to Heal: Women Facing Love, Sex and Relationship Addiction

“LOVE JUNKIE is so alive, it reads as though Rachel Resnick sliced open her heart, dipped in her pen, and chronicled her life of carnal and romantic madness in an ambulance with a bed in it. The result is a memoir of flesh and redemption, told with scorching intensity and clear-eyed, universal truth. As addictions go, sex and love possess their own brand of degradation and euphoria, and Resnick, like all great self-destructive artist/survivors, has clawed her way out of the abyss and crafted a savage, ass-wild language all her own to capture the need that drives her—and us—to dive back in. LOVE JUNKIE is a fearless, nasty, affectionate, weirdly spiritual, sex-soaked, smart and un-putdown-able Valentine from hell.”
— Jerry Stahl, author Permanent Midnight

“Heartbreaking and brave, Rachel Resnick masterfully pulls the past to the present, exploring how the seeds of addiction planted during a sad girlhood can blossom into a grown-up woman's frantic search for love. Love Junkie is a memoir unlike any other; it will blow your mind.”
— Lee Montgomery, author of The Things Between Us

“Rachel Resnick’s writing is at once so restrained and so infectiously exuberant that even the most cringe-inducing moments in Love Junkie are imbued with humor and, therefore, an enduring heroism.”
— Meghan Daum, author of My Misspent Youth and The Quality of Life Report

“Provocative. Striking. Rachel Resnick is a virtuoso on the page. Her fearless examination of the desperate thirst to find love is guaranteed to break your heart. Yet her cool-eyed analysis of the roots of this addiction inspires hope that through committed self-understanding, maybe each of us can change toxic patterns, whatever they may be.”
— Samantha Dunn, author of Faith in Carlos Gomez, Failing Paris, and Not by Accident