Library Journal

Brownell is a frequent contributor to various online parenting spaces, including The Imperfect Parent(www.imperfectparent.com), Babble.com, and Yahoo's Shine site (shine.yahoo.com). In this frank memoir, she journals her slide into alcoholism and her first year of recovery. She details in a conversational voice how her postpartum depression and the stresses of mothering three children, all under five years old, triggered her gradual dependence on multiple glasses of white wine. Her participation in social "cocktail playdate" groups for mommies with young children deepened the problem. Brownell doesn't pull any punches about the ugly side of her addiction, and her first year of sobriety is fraught with times where she felt lost, as if she were hanging on only by her fingernails, and overwhelmed by life without alcohol to help buffer it. VERDICT Brownell has an easy, readable style and a simple message. There is no glowing happy ending, just the reality that life must be faced one day at a time. This work will appeal to readers who like memoirs about ordinary people overcoming difficult life problems; individuals who find 12-step and recovery literature helpful will also be interested in this personal journey.—Crystal Renfro, Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta