A heart-breaking book about growing up and navigating love

The former Sunday Times dating columnist, Dolly Alderton’s memoir irons out the mythology of modern love, by recollecting dodgy hook-ups, failed relationships and weird flings with unfiltered honesty. Her tale of drunken romps through London, drug dealers called Fergus and Pricey late-night cab rides up the M1, She lists email parodies and recipes like the Seducer’ sole Meuniere. The real-life stories about women of every age, drawn from Alderton’s life and her friends, interspersed with entries form “ The Bad Date Diaries”, “ The Bad Party Chronicles”, recipes, lists and other vignettes.

Alderton’s opening sentence: “ Everything I Knew About Love as a Teenager, Romantic love is the most important and exciting thing in the entire world”.

She has seen and tried it all, and vividly recounts falling in love, wrestling with self-sabotage, finding a job, throwing a socially disastrous Rod-Stewart themed house party, getting drunk, getting dumped, realising that Ivan from the corner shop is the only man you’ve ever been able to rely on and finding that your mates are always there at the end of every messy night out.

This is a must-read book for all singles who are considering therapy

Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton Fig Tree £ 12.99, 336 pages.