September 2021 Top Novel: "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone" by Lori Gottlieb

There’s something wildly comforting about watching a therapist fall apart. Not out of cruelty, but because Lori Gottlieb shows us what it means to be human—with boundaries, titles, and professional masks stripped away. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone isn’t just a memoir. It’s a mirror.

I picked it up on a whim during a time when I felt a little emotionally frayed, and I ended up dog-earing half the book. Gottlieb, a therapist who finds herself in therapy after an unexpected breakup, brings readers behind the scenes of both her professional and personal unraveling. Through her clients’ stories and her own, she weaves a narrative that’s as funny as it is vulnerable.

What really stuck with me was the balance she strikes between introspection and levity. There’s John, the self-absorbed TV producer whose grief leaks out through sarcasm. Julie, a newlywed facing a terminal diagnosis. Rita, confronting a life she’s ready to leave. Each chapter feels like a session—sometimes painful, sometimes surprising, always enlightening.

Gottlieb never preaches. She reflects. She questions. She reminds us that therapists aren’t immune to heartbreak, anxiety, or uncertainty. They just learn to navigate it with a toolkit they often forget they’re allowed to use on themselves.

And that’s what made this book hit so personally. It gave me a new lens to view my own tangled thoughts and past choices, not with judgment, but curiosity. As Gottlieb says, “Insight is the booby prize of therapy.” Knowing something doesn’t mean you’ll fix it. But it’s a start.

If you’ve ever considered therapy, been in it, or simply wondered what your own inner monologue sounds like from the outside, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is for you. It’s less about answers and more about the messy, honest, hopeful pursuit of understanding.