The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing

This was an incredibly heartbreaking but easy book to read. Lara Love Hardin is very open about her past, her mistakes, and all she's done to get to where she's writing a book about it. I loved her honesty, her shocking push to live up to "good mom" standards, and the painful fall. It's an eye-opening look at our judicial system and its flaws and our questionable rage at seeing someone punished again and again for the same mistake. It's also an amazing internal look into yourself, a journey to understand and then forgive. The story has amazing grace and empathy.

As her memoir's title suggests, author Lara Love Hardin has been around the block a few times. As an affluent Californian with a substance abuse problem, she turned to identity theft to finance her heroin habit. After her arrest, she reports that she initially faced up to 27 years in prison, but somehow her public defender negotiated a plea deal that reduced her sentence to a year in county jail plus parole (even considering white privilege, this scenario doesn't seem plausible to me). She served her time, became a mother figure to her fellow inmates, and achieved sobriety. Yet even after her release, Hardin found that her sentence wasn't really over. The conditions of her parole required her to find stable housing, but she couldn't show more pass a background check. Her search for gainful employment was equally challenging. Hardin's former neighbors, whose checks and credit cards she had stolen during the worst moments of her addiction, made sure that her crimes were not forgotten.

Just when Hardin's future seemed its bleakest, a literary agent took a chance and hired her. Soon Hardin was hobnobbing with the likes of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and eventually even Oprah Winfrey, who selected this book for her influential book club.

I read this book in two days and I enjoyed the experience at the time. But, upon further reflection, I am unsure about how I feel this memoir. If an author were to set out to write a “Oprah book,” with details selected to attract the attention of the legendary media mogul, The Many Lives of Mama Love might be the result. The whole enterprise felt a little too calculated to me. show less

This is an eye-opening memoir about how addiction can derail your entire life. Lara is a mother to 4 boys, but she was in danger of being in jail until they were adults and losing custody rights due to her drug addiction. I was shocked at her enablers and the way drugs got into prison.
I was most impressed at the kindness of her employers who saw beyond the addiction and helped her stay in recovery, encouraging her talent and creativity. The people she met and helped along the way is a testament to her grit. I wasn't sure if I would like this but I really enjoyed it. Amazing story.

I liked this very much until about 2/3 of the way through, then it started to seem, as many memoirs do, quite self-serving. She does have Oprah's imprimatur, but so do Dr. Oz and Dr Phil, so... Love says she loves self-help books. I did too at her age, but by now, I think they try too hard to push their theories and ignore the realities that don't fit. Her devotion to Eckhart Tolle, another buddy of Oprah's, gave me a bit of the ick. Her description of life in jail was great.. She shows that the prison system can't exist without free labor from the prisoners. Her most meaningful pronouncement is that any prison sentence is a life sentence, and she shows how true that is. But by the end, the book reads like one of those 3 page Christmas show more letters that brag about the wonders of their perfect family. show less

[3.75] As a member of a family that was ravaged by the drug addiction in the late 60s and 70s, I found Hardin’s book to be both heart-wrenching and enlightening. It underscores the reality that we cannot cling to stereotypes that often shape society’s perception of drug addicts. I agree with some reviews that suggest the narrative drags a bit in spots – especially in the first third of the book. But the author’s remarkable story is dotted with life lessons and important insights about our criminal justice system – a system that purports to focus on reducing recidivism. “The system is cobbled together out of Catch-22s,” Hardin writes, adding that it is “illogical in its design, broken in its execution and guaranteed to show more fail those it allegedly serves.” show less

Lara Love Hardin recounts her slide from soccer mom to opioid addict to jailhouse shot caller and her unlikely comeback as a highly successful ghostwriter in this harrowing, hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir.

In this book, Hardin recounts her descent from respected soccer mom to opioid addict, committing crimes to feed her habit. She discusses frankly how her addiction not only impacted her life, but the lives of her children. It is easy to judge Hardin for thinking her addiction was hidden from her family. Her addiction leaves her blind to the risk to her family as she commits crime after crime to feed her growing habit.

Eventually, Hardin is caught, and she goes to jail. It is in jail that this story becomes interesting, a story of show more strength and resilience. She shows strength in beating her addiction for herself and her children and resilience in jumping through all the loopholes put in place by an unsympathetic system once she is on probation.

In reading her story, one may think that if Hardin can succeed after jail time, any one can and those that don’t succeed are either lazy or born criminals. Hardin herself address that, making it clear that although she struggled, she had it easier than most. She is a well-educated with a talent for writing and a support system that helped her succeed. This in no way diminishes her many accomplishments. If only the other women she encountered in jail had a similar support system, perhaps more of them would succeed out in society like Hardin.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book is scheduled to be published on August 1, 2023. show less

I listened to this is audiobook format.

This book is the memoir of Lara Love Hardin, an educated well-off suburban mom of four who steals from her neighbors to support her addiction to heroin. She is convicted and sent to prison, then released back into the world to find her place it. It's a well-told story and the first addiction tale I felt I could (almost) relate to. It's about guilt and forgiveness, family, friendships, believing in people, and believing in and forgiving yourself. I have a new-found empathy for those out on probation trying honestly to rebuild their lives while the system works against them at every turn. I highly recommend this book.