REVIEW for A Year Straight

A big thank you goes out to Andie from Seal Press for having so kindly sent me a copy of this book!

TITLE:               A Year Straight

AUTHOR:         Elena Azzoni

GENRE:           Memoir

RATING:          4 Stars

Reading A Year Straight brought out an interesting mixture of emotions for me.

I have always admired people who can write their life story honestly.  I can only imagine how difficult it must be to expose your life in that way – to let your readers into your most intimate thoughts and emotions and I can truthfully tell you that My Year Straight is definitely one of the most honest books I have ever read.

I love the way the author tells us, right up front, that she is a lesbian, all the while having developed a crush on her (male) yoga teacher.  This, of course, triggers a series of questions – namely, how does she really feel about men?

This is the jumping off point for an ‘experiment’ of sorts, where she decides to ‘date’ men for a while to see if the yoga teacher was simply a fluke.

From this point on, we are privy to the author’s frankly (for the most part) disastrous dating experiences with men.  She often finds herself ‘partying’ with her female friends and sleeping with men and compares these events openly – mainly realizing that being with women, for the most part, is wayyyyy easier on many, many levels.

This book was extremely interesting and entertaining to me because of the juxtaposition of spending time with women and men – i.e. is it truly ‘greener’ on the other side?  I believe that this is a question that many women ask themselves I believe and this book gives us a very interesting take on the answer.

There is a fair amount of sexual descriptions (which is fine) and a lot of funny stories.  The writing is also very engaging and often made me feel as though I was ‘privy’ to some great inside scoops (my favorite).

The ending totally surprised me – but I will leave that as a surprise!

Loved this book.