Learn Why Your Love Life is so Complicated

Liz Langley is a freelance writer who mostly writes about love and relationships. Her articles have appeared in a wide variety of publications and websites. According to her blog “she is a columnist for SeXis magazine and her writing has appeared in/on Salon.com, Jezebel, Alternet, Details, Glamour, Bust, Carnal Nation, Destination Weddings & Honeymoons and Gene Simmon’s Tongue. She’s [sic] regularly blogs for MyPleasure.com and has been a columnist for the Toronto Sun, the Orlando Weekly and the Orlando Sentinel and has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Florida Press Association and Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. Her work also appeared in Best Sex Writing 2008 (Cleis Press).”

Inspired by the plethora of strange things people do in the name of love and her own confused feelings about relationships, Liz Langley has embarked on a quest to find out why we do the crazy things we do when it comes to love. She's assembled an entertaining mix of scientific findings about how brain chemistry affects our relationships, anecdotes about her own love life, and many stories of strange, alarming, or downright dangerous escapades of people who let their emotions get the best of them.

The book is designed to appeal to anyone who has experienced confusion about why our emotions work the way they do—in other words, a very broad audience! While the book appears to have been primarily targeted at women, I can say that as a man I found it insightful and entertaining, too.

The style of the book is a bit odd. At times it feels like it's trying to lecture us about science, whereas at other times it feels like a newspaper gossip column or a tell-all biography. All this within a single page, sometimes. Unfortunately the jarring approach is nearly enough to give your brain whiplash.

It can be nice to break up dry scientific material with anecdotes and interesting stories, but it just doesn’t flow well, which is a shame because the material is interesting. The other problem with this organization is that some of the material can feel a bit repetitive when you get bits and pieces here and there. “Hey,” you‘ll think, “wasn’t I reading about that same hormone and its effect on the brain thirty pages ago?” And you’ll be right; the discussion of the effects of brain chemistry is repeated several times with minor changes. While it can be nice to get a refresher if it’s been a while since you read the previous chapter or if you’re skipping around and reading chapters out of order, it can be tedious if you’re reading the book straight through as I did.

The book has an attractive cover which isn’t too garish. Yes, it has the word “sex” on the cover, but it doesn’t really jump out too much and the context makes it pretty clear that it’s not erotica. The interior design is rather plain and simple, but it’s easy on the eyes and a pleasure to read with a well-chosen typeface and straightforward design.