#10 in Biography & memoir
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
- 432
- Pages
- about 8 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 29 weeks on the list, peaked at #4
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About the book
One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but. As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell. With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.6 across 565 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 79% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Biography & memoir average of 8.2. That is how 8.5 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.7 | 35 | 6% |
| Hardcover | 8.7 | 530 | 94% |
Reader voices
The most-liked reviews on Hardcover (credited to their authors).
“This was the right book at the right time, with lots of thoughts worth revisiting and remembering.”
“I did not expect to love this as much as I did. Easy and engaging read, that got me multiple times laughing out loud or sobbing in the train. I’ve highlighted so many phrases and paragraphs throughout the book and gained deeper curiosity towards my own patterns.”
Frequently asked
How long is Maybe You Should Talk to Someone?
It has 432 pages — longer than 80% of the ranked books in Biography & memoir.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Biography & memoir — with scores between 8.4 and 8.6, closest to this book.
