Audiobook Review: Life in Pieces by Dawn O’Porter

Publication date: October 1st 2020
Publisher: HarperCollins

Summary:

Dawn O’Porter has been thinking about life. In lockdown. Mostly from a cupboard.

From reflections on grief and identity, bad hair and parenting, sleep and spirituality, to the things we can control and the things we cannot, Dawn’s daily diaries track the journey – for a hilarious, heartbreaking and highly entertaining glimpse into the new normal.

LIFE IN PIECES is a book for anyone who’s been thrown into a life they didn’t plan, or who just wants to stick it to 2020. When it looks like everything’s falling apart, we’ll piece it back together.

Love Dawn x

Source: Goodreads

Thoughts:

2020 certainly was an… interesting year! In this audiobook, author and journalist, Dawn O’Porter candidly reflects on her year so far, detailing all of her highs and lows of the Coronavirus lockdown.

This book is made up of a series of diary entries and blog posts and it’s not particularly long so makes for an easy read. It was a little bit repetitive, but so was the lockdown so I think this can be forgiven!

Dawn tells us everything about her time in lockdown and it’s nice to know that in LA she was going through similar things to us all in the UK: missing family and friends, home schooling, trying new recipes, binging TV and doing our best to help our own communities.

I really enjoyed that this book was self-narrated and Dawn’s passion and emotion was crystal clear in her tone of voice, especially when talking about the death of her close friend Caroline Flack at the beginning of the year.

Some of the stories were funny, others were heart-breaking. The book was unashamedly honest and Dawn definitely didn’t shy away from subjects that others might prefer kept under wraps! Be prepared for details of potty training, period pain and tales of a few too many margheritas!

As I’m not married with children, and I’m younger than Dawn is, I found quite a lot of the content unrelatable for me personally. I think Dawn’s musings would resonate with mothers of young children a lot more.

Overall rating: “Life in Pieces” tells one woman’s story of her family during lockdown. I did enjoy it and found a lot of Dawn’s experiences to be very similar to my own, but I think this book would be better suited to mother’s of young children, especially those who were home-schooling at the beginning of the pandemic. An enjoyable 3 star read for me!