Samantha's Reviews > Hard to Love: Essays and Confessions

What drew me to Briallen Hopper's collection was its overarching theme of a chosen or found family - a rejection of the dichotomous get-married-or-die-alone life template and an exploration of the romances that exist outside it. To place sole importance on the traditional romantic relationship seems a disservice to the potential that friendships have to be intimate and life-changing, and Hopper recounts many instances of friendships that have shaped her life, including caring for a friend with cancer and moving in with another who is at a very different place in life. Her essay "Moby Dick" is my favorite, a painful, eye-opening account of Hopper's ongoing fertility journey, and I appreciate her candor in talking openly about what it's like to try to have a baby outside the confines of couplehood. As less people are deciding to get married and more are choosing to stay single, I suspect this will be a widely referenced collection on platonic love in years to come.