Valerie Bertinelli made me ugly-cry over a man I never met, and I wasn't even listening to a romance.
I was making pozole on a Sunday afternoon — Frida perched on the counter judging my knife work as usual — when I put this on thinking it'd be light celebrity memoir territory. Background listening, maybe. Something to keep my hands busy and my brain half-engaged. I was wrong. By the time Valerie started talking about Eddie Van Halen's final days, I had to put the knife down and just... stand there in my kitchen. Crying into a pot of broth.
She's Not Acting Here, and That's the Whole Point
Here's what got me: Valerie narrates her own book, and you can hear exactly when she's holding it together and when she's not. There's this quality in her voice when she talks about Eddie — not the rock star Eddie, but the Eddie who was the father of her kid, the man she never fully stopped loving even after the divorce — where her cadence slows down and gets rougher around the edges. She's not performing grief. She's just in it. And it hits different when you can hear someone's actual breath catch. I got that same feeling of an unvarnished, intimate confession from Hurricanes: A Memoir.
This isn't a polished celebrity tell-all. It's more like Valerie sat across from you at a kitchen table (fitting, since she's literally a Food Network host) and just started talking. About growing up as a child star on One Day at a Time and learning at like fourteen that her body was public property. About the decades she spent punishing herself on scales and in mirrors. About watching her son Wolfie play onstage with Van Halen and feeling simultaneously proud and terrified that he'd inherit his father's demons along with his talent.
The Body Stuff Hit Different Than I Expected
I expected the body image chapters to feel familiar — I've read plenty of women writing about hating their bodies, and honestly sometimes those sections can feel like they're checking a box. But Valerie does something I wasn't ready for. She connects her weight obsession directly to specific moments of emotional crisis, so it's never just "I was on a diet." It's "I was on a diet because my life was falling apart and controlling my body was the only control I had." That specificity made me set my phone down and stare at the wall for a minute.
And look — I grew up watching my abuela get told by doctors to lose weight while she was literally grieving my abuelo, so the way Valerie talks about the world's obsession with women's weight as a moral failing rather than a health conversation? That one landed square in my chest. Abuela would have loved this one. She would've been like, "Mija, finally someone is saying it."
The Six-Hour Sit-Down That Feels Like Three
At just under seven hours, this is a quick listen, but it doesn't feel rushed. It feels like the exact right length — a long, honest conversation where nobody is padding for time. Valerie's delivery is warm without being saccharine. She laughs at herself. She gets quiet when she needs to. No background music, no production tricks, just her voice in your ears. And honestly? That stripped-down approach is exactly what this book needs. Any embellishment would've felt fake. I've found that same kind of bare-bones magic works even for Shakespeare—Midsummer Night's Dream with just a single narrator felt immediate and surprisingly intimate.
One thing I'll flag: if you're not already somewhat familiar with who Valerie Bertinelli is — the sitcom career, the Jenny Craig era, the Van Halen marriage — some context might feel assumed rather than explained. She's writing for people who grew up watching her, and that's fine, but younger listeners might need to Google a few references.
Who Needs This in Their Queue
If you've ever stood on a scale and let the number decide your worth for the day — listen to this. If you've lost someone you loved messily and imperfectly — listen to this. If you're a woman who's tired of being told that self-improvement means self-punishment — absolutely listen to this.
Skip it if you want tight narrative structure or if celebrity memoirs aren't your thing regardless. This reads more like personal essays than chronological memoir, and some sections feel more like journal entries than polished chapters. That's not a flaw to me — it felt honest — but if you need a clean narrative arc, this might frustrate you.
My Heart Needed This Particular Sunday
Three crying sessions. (Updated the spreadsheet. I'm nothing if not consistent.) Not the gut-wrenching, can't-breathe kind, but the quiet kind where tears just roll down your face and you don't bother wiping them because you're holding a wooden spoon and also because sometimes crying just feels right. This book felt like sitting with someone who's done pretending she's fine, and there's something so deeply comforting about that.
The pozole turned out great, by the way.
