Rating: ★★★☆☆
Read this if you’re ready to be horrified by humanity and comforted by its beauty.
Hindsight gives most people 20/20. It gave Elizabeth Gilbert x-ray vision.
In her memoir, All the Way to the River, Liz tells her story of love, friendship, addiction, and loss with clarity, humility, and a truth that is 10-layers deep—all with integrity and kindness. While she shared her spiritual journey in Eat, Pray, Love, this time she shares her spiritual healing.
This memoir is about Liz’s struggle with her own addiction all while loving and caring for someone with their own. Rayya, her best friend turned romantic partner, also becomes Liz’s source of destruction. She tells the story of her relationship with Rayya as her most beautiful and destructive love story. The memoir is about humanity, God, and the always challenging curriculum of Earth School. It’s told with sprinklings of poems, drawings, sketches, and letters from God between the chapters—all making you feel like you are having the most intimate conversations with the deepest parts of the human soul.
My Thoughts
This book was so insightful, it hurt!
I have never struggled with addiction nor have I ever cared for anyone who was. And while at the surface this is a memoir about addiction, it goes deeper and navigates storylines of finding true love, discovering yourself, and proof of God. At times it felt like fiction—too manic and too wild for real life. But Liz’s brutal honesty gave way to connection beyond the surface.
Through the nightmares and despair, Liz never loses sight of God. And that was my big connection with this story. For me, 2026 is a year of discovery and strengthening of my relationship with God. My word of the year is TRUST—trust in God and through those eyes of faith, trust in myself. And All the Way to the River is a testament of one woman’s trust in God.
Because this is a story about addiction, there is a lot of narrative about AA. I made some personal connections to Church and AA and recorded a journal with my thoughts. I’ve authored a separate blog post as an extension of thought on this book and the impact it had on me.
[Read the journal entry by clicking here]
I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. And I learned more than I thought I would too! I don’t think I ever read Eat, Pray, Love and I’m almost positive I never saw the movie. So I didn’t have any fan girl reactions to this being about Elizabeth Gilbert’s secret life. But I respect her so much for her vulnerability, her wisdom, and her authenticity.
Bottom Line: This is a book where everyone will get something different out of it. Whether you connect with the addiction narrative, the spiritual journey, or the raw examination of love at its most beautiful and most destructive, All the Way to the River offers something profound. Just be prepared—it’s not an easy read, but it’s an unforgettable one.
Have you read All the Way to the River? What did you take away from it? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
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