Mandy Len Catron was a woman who thought love was a fairytale. She believed in happily-ever-after romantic comedies, romantic literature and the Disneyesque stories promising everlasting happiness. That is, until her parents’ three-decades-long marriage – a union that the author had once hoped to emulate – came to an end. At the same time, her own 10-year relationship came to a halt. With her love bubble burst, the author set out to discover what love really is and how we know if we are really in love or if we are caught in an illusion of love.

This memoir is a series of essays in which the author explores personal stories and different stages of love. She writes with honesty, humour and candour, and she includes biological, psychological and social research about the mythology and representation of love in popular culture, citing movies like Pretty Woman and the novels of Jane Austen. She recounts how her grandparents met and married in a coal-mining town in poverty-stricken times, and she also tells the story of her parents, who married young and sustained an enduring relationship filled with love and respect.

Mandy Len Catron also writes about her own relationship, which started as a long-distance connection before she and her partner lived together in Canada and the partner sought permanent residency. The relationship shattered Len Catron’s idealism about love, and she started to question what she thought she wanted from love.

As she ploughed her way forward to find love again, she ran a 36-question psychological experiment (which she includes in the book) on a date. Her results led her to new theories about love and what it means to love and be loved.

I enjoyed this book and the author’s journey of self-discovery. Brave readers will be intrigued to try the question experiment themselves, and the author’s observations could ignite interesting book-club discussion.

Reviewed by Fotini Dangiris