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My Journey from Shame to Strength
by Liz Pryor
For readers of Orange Is the New Black and The Glass Castle, a riveting memoir about a lifelong secret and a girl finding strength in the most unlikely place.
In 1979, Liz Pryor is a seventeen-year-old girl from a good family in the wealthy Chicago suburbs. Halfway through her senior year of high school, she discovers that she is pregnant - a fact her parents are determined to keep a secret from her friends, siblings, and community forever. One snowy January day, after driving across three states, her mother drops her off at what Liz thinks is a Catholic home for unwed mothers - but which is, in truth, a locked government-run facility for delinquent and impoverished pregnant teenage girls.
In the cement-block residence, Liz is alone and terrified, a fish out of water - a girl from a privileged, sheltered background living amid tough, street-savvy girls who come from the foster care system or juvenile detention. But over the next six months, isolated and in involuntary hiding from everyone she knows, Liz develops a surprising bond with the other girls and begins to question everything she once held true. Told with tenderness, humor, and an open heart, Look at You Now is a deeply moving story about the most vulnerable moments in our lives - and how a willingness to trust ourselves can permanently change who we are and how we see the world.
"Engrossing ... Readers will swiftly be drawn into the author's compassionate retelling of her teen pregnancy - her fear, shame, regret, joy, and even her forgiveness of her parents for sending her away. This coming-of-age memoir is authentic and unforgettable." - Publishers Weekly
"Pryor's refusal to bury the truth of her experiences is the greatest strength of her book. Her honesty about a youthful error and desire to let that honesty define the rest of her life are both uplifting and inspiring. An unsentimental yet moving coming-of-age memoir." - Kirkus
"I started reading this book thinking it was a compelling, honest, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant look at the world of teenage pregnancy, and knowing it would offer an inside look at the places where girls used to be hidden away until their babies came. I finished it damp-eyed and understanding that Look at You Now is much more than that. It is a story about how family dynamics work." - Elizabeth Berg, author of The Dream Lover
"Liz Pryor's story is shocking, moving, riveting, and, ultimately, inspiring. She writes like a natural, can balance humor and sorrow perfectly, and in Look at You Now, has written a pitch-perfect memoir." - Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life
This information about Look at You Now was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Liz Pryor is an author, speaker, parenting columnist, and life advice expert. Her book about female friendship, What Did I Do Wrong?, was a finalist for a Books for a Better Life Award. In 2011, ABC's Good Morning America conducted a national search for an on-air life advice guru, and out of fifteen thousand applicants, Pryor was chosen for the position. She lives in Los Angeles with her three children.
My Darling Boy by John Dufresne
The story of of a man whose son collapses into addiction and vanishes into the chaotic netherworld of southern Florida.
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