Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton is a coming-off age memoir where Dolly takes us through her teenage years at boarding school, her university years at Essex and her mid to late twenties exploring London. Dolly Alderton gives a refreshing, uncensored view of her love life, her mental health state, her work life, her friendships and her family relations. The story has laugh-out-loud moments, tear-jerker moments and painful truths that I think many girls/women/people can relate to.

By no means is the book perfect, there were some random references, letters and ramblings that I didn't really follow. I'm also not sure I was sold on her recipes dotted throughout the book (mostly because they weren't foods I was that interested in). However, the whole thing fit with Alderton's personality and style and offered an interesting glimpse into a woman who has clearly grown and developed over her teens and twenties immensely.

For me, the pinnacle of the book was Alderton's focus on her female friendships, the strength she took from those, the support she gave to her friends and the growth that she was capable of recognising in this memoir. These friendships to me held the most pain, joy and tearful moments and it was so incredibly refreshing to see a young woman talk about her friendships as the driving force in her life. Often, I feel like we focus too much on sexual love life, when our friendships are just as important when talking about love. This was something Alderton made very clear throughout her book and was really heart-warming.

The second point that was really good was Alderton's honesty about her mental health, sexual relations, her mental health, her relationship with her body and her attitude. She spoke about going to therapy, she spoke about her relationship with food and alcohol, and frivolity with money. I think for a woman, these are still subjects that can have women branded and condemned and are not frequently talked about by women. The courage and the honesty is so important if young women are not going to be slandered for their behaviour whilst men are applauded. Considering that I came across Alderton's book after listening to her joint podcast with Pandora Sykes, I'd been introduced to Alderton when she wasn't a reckless youngster. This offered a very different insight to Alderton's life and really made me see how much she's grown as a person. This is definitely something I related to as my late teenage years are far different to how I feel now in my 20s.

Overall, I really enjoyed Dolly Alderton's memoir and it felt fiery, honest and refreshing. I would recommend both the book and her podcast to fellow feminists, non-feminist, fans of interesting women and fans of memoirs.