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I couldn't put the book down and by the time my husband came home late that night from a business trip, I'd finished it. The next morning over breakfast, my husband looked up from the newspapers and announced, "I finished a whole book last night." "So did I!" I said. You see the punch line coming: He'd picked up Gillies' memoir from the table where I'd left it and he couldn't put it down either.
Gillies' memoir is so disarming, especially given that she's not a writer. But therein lies her charm... you're on her side. Gillies comes off as a genuinely peppy, uncomplicated woman. For those readers who've endured similar seismic shifts of the heart, Happens Every Day will offer the comfort of solidarity. For the rest of us who've been, so far, spared, it makes for compulsive and, frankly, chilling late night reading.
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– Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, NPR
This is another favorite of mine. I started this book on a plane last week and did not stop until I'd finished. What I really admired about this book is the way Gillies is brutally honest, even when it comes to certain moments that are less than flattering for her. Fans of "Eat, Pray, Love" will devour this book.
-John Searles, book editor, Cosmopolitan magazine
It's a surgical reconstruction of her marriage's sudden collapse, and it's utterly honest and painful. It's a tart book, a universal book, which is to say completely human, and eminently worth reading for both men and women.
-Palm Beach Post
Happens Every Day, by Isabel Gillies, is a happy book about a sad story . . . [it] reads like an intimate conversation with a lifelong friend. As Isabel's marriage dissolves, the reader is drawn into scenes of anger, hopefulness and self-doubt that anyone who has known heartbreak can relate to. For a story about the tragedy of a failed marriage, Happens Every Day is enlightening and uplifting, devoid of bitterness and resentment, and reflective of a woman who has borne an immense burden and emerged victorious.
-St. Petersburg Times
Happens is an emotional train wreck you gobble up, rooting for the engaging Gillies.
-USA Today
By turns enlightening, funny, gut-wrenching, this is a great read about one of the great truths in life: you can't control what happens to you, you can only control how you react. In terms of compelling reading, Happens Every Day is the nonfiction equivalent of Nora Ephron's Heartburn. Highly recommended.
-Library Journal, starred review
Isabel Gillies has written a heartbreaking memoir about the wild unpredictability of the human heart. She is stunningly candid and reminds every reader that, yes, lives fall apart, husbands leave wives, people start over-Happens Every Day. Gillies is moving, funny, authentic, and never a victim. Her voice is instantly compelling.
-Elisabeth Robinson, author of
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters
Isabel Gillies tells the story of the breakup of her "perfect" marriage with astonishing honesty, sharp humor, and not a shred of self-pity. This is a memoir that reads like a gripping mystery and a moving coming-of-age tale.
-David Auburn, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Proof
Gillies movingly evokes the salt-on-wound sadness of loving a spouse turned stranger.
—People
I couldn't help but admire her bravery in exposing the dark side of her seemingly perfect life in such a good-humored, self-effacing way. You feel nothing but deepest sympathy.
—Elle
[An] emotionally involving account of a marriage that seemed nearly perfect—until the day it wasn't. It's to Gillies' credit that she stays as evenhanded as she does in the story that follows... Her collapse feels real, and in Happens Every Day there's a redemptive grace in her struggle.
—Entertainment Weekly
What a strange and wonderful surprise: a gorgeous, funny, exuberant book about the disastrous end of a marriage. A loss like Gillies's might happen all the time, but it's rarely met with the passion, compassion, energy, and warmth that suffuse every page. With charming candor, she lays bare her sorrow and her joys, and finds a true-and instructive-talent for transformation and happiness.
-Maile Meloy, author of Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter
A smart, rueful memoir of love, betrayal, and survival.
-O, The Oprah Magazine
[Gillies] brings to life the town of Oberlin, Ohio, complete with organic market, eccentric academics and insanely quaint coffee shops.
—Kirkus
As intimate as if it came from your best friend.
—Parenting magazine