Catherine (alternativelytitledbooks) - so very behind!'s Reviews > The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing

**Many thanks to @SimonBooks and Lara Love Hardin for a gifted copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! Now available as of 8.1!**

"Escape was always my real addiction, the one true high. Books were just my gateway drug. Sex just got me pregnant. Food just made me puffy. Vicodin just helped me pretend I was happy. The heroin, though, that gave me everything I had ever wanted--peace, joy, escape.

Until it didn't.

And everything I knew and everyone I loved was gone.”

Lara Love Hardin was the model Mom Next Door: good job, fancy house, lovely family. Until one day she finds herself leading a very different life, stealing credit cards out of her neighbors' mailboxes to help fund her drug addiction. Hardin would do anything for her kids, so she attempts to shield them from this lifestyle and outrun the law. But when the cops show up at her door, she ends up convicted of 32 felonies...and set to potentially lose custody of her youngest son forever.

The year in confinement passes slowly for Hardin, but she struggles to find her way and her place in the hierarchy of the jail, eventually earning the moniker "Mama Love." But with her opportunity to hold onto custody hanging in the balance and a certain man in her life encouraging her to go right back to drugs, can Mama Love embrace the possibilities and potential of a brand new life? Or is the pull of addiction enough to keep her held tight in its deadly snare?

I knew very little about Hardin going into this book, but by the end of the first chapter, that feeling was but a fleeting memory. Hardin is a deep and reflective soul, a word nerd, and she has struggled with insecurity and feeling out of place for much of her life. In other words? We have a LOT in common...and I was INSTANTLY enraptured by her story. This memoir is the kind of read that ALMOST feels like fiction, because the narrative was SO compelling. Hardin takes the reader on such an intense journey in such a short amount of time, and as a reader, you genuinely have no idea where she's headed next!

Hardin explores the shame and stigma that society places on those who have been incarcerated AND systemic problems surrounding recidivism all while never holding back the good, bad, and ugly of her own journey, and she does so with a beautiful vulnerability that will touch your heart. Her journey isn't linear, and neither is pain: but when I tell you it ends with the Dalai Lama and Oprah...well, you have to read it to believe it! 😉

And by journey's end, Mama Love herself sums up her journey best: "I know I have a lot more inner work to do. I thought I had to convince the whole world that I am more than the worst thing I have done, the worst person I have been, but really I just have to convince myself."

4 stars

#SimonBooksBuddy #themanylivesofmamalove