{"id":1717,"date":"2025-01-23T11:57:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T11:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=1717"},"modified":"2025-01-23T11:57:00","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T11:57:00","slug":"book-review-how-to-explain-by-louise-krug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=1717","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: How to Explain by Louise Krug"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How to Explain<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

by Louise Krug<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong> Memoir \/ Essays<\/p>\n

ISBN: <\/strong>9798888387511<\/p>\n

Print Length:<\/strong> 88 pages<\/p>\n

Publisher:<\/strong> Finishing Line Press<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Reviewed by Melissa Suggitt<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>Louise Krug writes with a voice so raw, it feels like she\u2019s handed you her heart.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Reading How to Explain<\/em> feels like sitting down with a friend who doesn\u2019t shy away from telling you the messy, complicated, and achingly beautiful truth of her life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This memoir in essays pulls you into Louise\u2019s world post-brain surgery, where partial facial paralysis becomes both the least and most defining part of her identity. It\u2019s not a polished \u201cI overcame it all\u201d memoir, but rather an honest, vulnerable, and even funny look at what it means to live with visible and invisible scars. From explaining her condition to a curious neighbor kid to managing the tender complexities of marriage, motherhood, and self-image, Louise opens up in a way that hits you right in the feels.<\/p>\n

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My favorite thread throughout this unique narrative is the therapy sessions. As someone deeply familiar with the relationship between therapist and patient, and as someone working through self-esteem and executive functioning challenges myself, I felt an almost immediate connection to Louise\u2019s stories. With each therapy session she described, I found myself nodding along, her words cutting close to my own experiences. Many of us know the struggle of finding the right therapist or of sitting in that room and not having the mental capacity to accept what we\u2019re being told about ourselves. It\u2019s easy to fall into a spiral of self-pity, wanting nothing more than validation that it\u2019s okay to feel this way. Louise\u2019s writing captures that so perfectly\u2014the push and pull of wanting to stay in the safety of that narrative versus finding the strength to put in the work and change how you see yourself and the world around you.<\/p>\n

For anyone juggling the chaos of work, kids, and just trying to keep it together, Louise\u2019s words land like a lifeline. Her essays explore the weight of self-doubt and the ache of wanting to be seen as whole, and they do it with such candor that you can\u2019t help but feel your heart cracking open a little. She doesn\u2019t just write about living with challenges\u2014she writes about living, period, in all its messy, vulnerable, beautiful imperfection.<\/p>\n

And the way she tells her story? Completely, wholly her own. Each essay is a world\u2014sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes deeply introspective, always engaging. There\u2019s a transparency in her writing that feels like sitting in on a conversation she\u2019s having with herself, and you\u2019re just lucky enough to listen in.<\/p>\n

Reading this book made me feel seen, like someone else gets the quiet struggles of trying to explain yourself to a world that loves tidy resolutions and simple stories. Louise doesn\u2019t give you that. Instead, she offers you something better: a look at the unresolvable, the messy middle, the beauty in imperfection.<\/p>\n

How to Explain<\/em> isn\u2019t just a moving book\u2014it\u2019s a hug for anyone who\u2019s ever felt different, lost, or broken and is learning to find their way. It\u2019s a reminder that being vulnerable is its own kind of strength.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Thank you for reading Melissa Suggitt\u2019s book review of How to Explain <\/em>by Louise Krug! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.<\/p>\n

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The post Book Review: How to Explain by Louise Krug<\/a> appeared first on Independent Book Review<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How to Explain by Louise Krug Genre: Memoir \/ Essays ISBN: 9798888387511 Print Length: 88 pages Publisher: Finishing Line Press Amazon Bookshop Reviewed by Melissa Suggitt Louise Krug writes with a voice so raw, it feels like she\u2019s handed you her heart. Reading How to Explain feels like sitting down with a friend who doesn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}