HEART VALUE | Kirkus Reviews

More life reflections by the best-selling author on issues of social captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.

In her third book, Doyle (Loves a warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” This woman, Avi Wombach, will become his wife. The narrative is symbolically arranged into three parts – “cage”, “keys”, “freedom” – the narrative offers, among other elements, signs about the childhood of the soul writer, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, “a girl in a cage designed for a wide open sky . ” She went the way that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and her adolescence conditioning. After spiraling down to “drinking, drugs and purification,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she suppressed. Still, there were troubles: a troubled marriage was already a betrayal of her husband, which eventually led to life-changing choices and a discovery of love she had never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and honest, whether she admits to falsifying an election for a high school homecoming court or whether she condemns the exciting perfectionism of “parenting cream cheese,” which is about “giving your kids the best of everything.” The author’s fears and anxieties are often reflected in real-world issues: gender roles and biases, white privileges, racism and homophobia, and hypocrisy that feeds on religion. Some of the stories only float to the surface of larger themes, but Doyle repeats them in later passages and digs deeper, using friends and family references to define their impact on her life, past and present. Shorter passages, some only page-long, manage to effectively translate emotional punching, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blossoming lesbian love outside of marriage a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a brave woman eager to share the richness of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and restoring her inner strength and resilience.

Doyle offers another bright and inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.