Enough Already
Learning to Love the Way I Am Today
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4.3 • 32 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Beloved actress, Food Network personality, and New York Times bestselling author Valerie Bertinelli reflects on life at sixty and beyond.
Behind the curtain of her happy on-screen persona, Valerie Bertinelli’s life has been no easy ride, especially when it comes to her own self-image and self-worth. She waged a war against herself for years, learning to equate her value to her appearance as a child star on One Day at a Time and punishing herself in order to fit into the unachievable Hollywood mold. She struggled to make her marriage to Eddie Van Halen — the true love of her life — work, despite all the rifts the rock-star lifestyle created between them. She then watched her son follow in his father’s footsteps, right up onto the stage of Van Halen concerts, and begin his own music career. And like so many women, she cared for her parents as their health declined and saw the roles of parent and child reverse. Through mourning the loss of her parents, discovering more about her family’s past, and realizing how short life really is when she and her son lost Eddie, Valerie finally said, “Enough already!” to a lifelong battle with the scale and found a new path forward to joy and connection. Despite hardships and the pressures of the media industry to be something she’s not, Valerie is, at last, accepting herself: she knows who she is, has discovered her self-worth, and has learned how to prioritize her health and happiness over her weight. With an intimate look into her insecurities, heartbreaks, losses, triumphs, and revelations, Enough Already is the story of Valerie’s sometimes humorous, sometimes raw, but always honest journey to love herself and find joy in the everyday, in family, and in the food and memories we share.
“This thoughtful, bighearted book is sure to be a hit with Bertinelli fans and those with an appetite for stories of hard-won self-acceptance. A warmly intimate memoir.”
– Kirkus Reviews
“In a series of brutally frank essays, Bertinelli looks back on the emotional struggles and triumphs of her life. By turns raw and inspiring, this contains a little bit of wisdom for everyone.”
– Publishers Weekly
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Actress Valerie Bertinelli opens up about getting older and learning to love herself. Her feel-good memoir, written just as she was turning 60, is structured as a series of deeply personal essays, in which she discusses everything from her most profound losses—like mourning the death of her ex-husband Eddie Van Halen—to her happiest moments, like proudly listening to her son’s first album over and over. Through it all, Bertinelli returns to an inspiring decision she made during the past few years to choose joy whenever possible. She also talks about her determination to no longer tie her value to her weight, and sprinkles in some of her favorite mouthwatering recipes. (We can’t wait to try her Sicilian Chocolate Love Cake.) Bertinelli seems so buoyant and sincere, you can’t help taking it to heart when she talks about counting your blessings and remembering to smile. Enough Already is a down-to-earth memoir with a wonderfully positive message.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a series of brutally frank essays, Bertinelli (Losing It), host of the Food Network show Valerie's Home Cooking, looks back on the emotional struggles and triumphs of her life. Sharing her "efforts to, at sixty-one years old, set aside the land mines of denial, negativity, and self-hate" that she cultivated during her decades-long acting career, she contends with her weight gain after losing 50 pounds and posing on the cover of People Magazine in a bikini ("I was happy that day although I almost fainted on the set"); conveys her deep grief around the death of her ex-husband Eddie Van Halen, who died from cancer in October 2020; and revels in her joy at winning two Emmy Awards for her TV show. She doesn't mince words when speaking of her body image issues, the challenges she faced as an actor ("the process made me anxious"), or how she overcame her shortcomings and learned to accept her appearance ("whether I was a size two, an eight, or a twelve, I was still me"). As Bertinelli works through her pain, she offers rewards in the form of sumptuous recipes—including, notably, her spinach-crab dip, her mother's unbeatable lasagna, and Sicilian Chocolate Love Cake. By turns raw and inspiring, this contains a little bit of wisdom for everyone.
