“With the same self-effacing prose found in her debut, Gillies describes her journey from the pain of lost love to the land of the living with humor and compassion… Readers will cheer along with the author, whose heart overflows in the conclusion of this enduring story of life after love.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“So charmed, so enamored was I by this tale of love lost and found that I would have sat down to lavish it with praise the minute I put the book down, but I was weeping too hard. We all want to believe in second chances, in broken hearts mended, and at its core, this is a book about that kind of hope. Brava.”
— Deborah Copaken Kogan, author of Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War and Hell Is Other Parents: And Other Tales of Maternal Combustion
“Isabel Gillies’ sheer honesty is a breath of fresh air, and this pained, hopeful, and sweet account of life after divorce will keep you reading long after you should have gone to bed.”
— Janice Y. K. Lee, author of The Piano Teacher
“Isabel Gillies gives us a story of unexpected romance, unfolding the story of her journey from divorce heartbreak and single motherhood to new love and family with genuine intimacy and humor.”
— Julie Metz, author of the New York Times bestseller Perfection
“Undoubtedly there are worse things in life than having to set up post-divorce camp in your parents’ apartment, as Gillies discovers in this engaging memoir, a follow-up to 2009’s Happens Every Day. Her observations about single motherhood are sharper now, and she charms while describing her precarious perch on the higher rungs of the Manhattan social ladder (with only $524 in the bank and borrowed shoes for a first date). When love comes her way, Gillies is shrewd enough not to drift into fantasyland: She knows that she’s holding her golden new life together with a mysterious glue made from love, persistence, and plain old good luck.”
— Elaina Richardson, More magazine
“Actress Gillies (Detective Stabler’s wife on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) picks up where she left off in her surprise best-seller, Happens Every Day (2009). There she detailed the breakup of her marriage after her husband, a college professor, had an affair with (and later married) a colleague. Here she relays in an intimate, conversational style the difficult year after the breakup, when she left the small, idyllic Ohio college town in which she’d been living and moved with her two young sons back into her parents’ Manhattan apartment. Depressed over the failed marriage, humbled by her need for her parents’ help at this stage in her life, and anxious about her future, she cries, forces herself to go on a series of blind dates, and slowly begins to remake her life. She finds comfort in a close-knit circle of girlfriends and, with refreshing candor, takes a hard look at her own part in the marital crack-up. When she finally finds love again, the reader rejoices in her hard-won happiness.”
— Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist
Halloween at Apartment 7A
“I couldn’t put the book down and by the time my husband came home late that night from a business trip, I’d finished it. The next morning over breakfast, my husband looked up from the newspapers and announced, “I finished a whole book last night.” “So did I!” I said. You see the punch line coming: He’d picked up Gillies’ memoir from the table where I’d left it and he couldn’t put it down either. Gillies’ memoir is so disarming, especially given that she’s not a writer. But therein lies her charm… you’re on her side. Gillies comes off as a genuinely peppy, uncomplicated woman. For those readers who’ve endured similar seismic shifts of the heart, Happens Every Day will offer the comfort of solidarity. For the rest of us who’ve been, so far, spared, it makes for compulsive and, frankly, chilling late night reading.” Read more…
— Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, NPR
“This is another favorite of mine. I started this book on a plane last week and did not stop until I’d finished. What I really admired about this book is the way Gillies is brutally honest, even when it comes to certain moments that are less than flattering for her. Fans of Eat, Pray, Love will devour this book.”
— John Searles, Book Editor, Cosmopolitan
“It’s a surgical reconstruction of her marriage’s sudden collapse, and it’s utterly honest and painful. It’s a tart book, a universal book, which is to say completely human, and eminently worth reading for both men and women.”
— Palm Beach Post
“Happens Every Day, by Isabel Gillies, is a happy book about a sad story … [It] reads like an intimate conversation with a lifelong friend. As Isabel’s marriage dissolves, the reader is drawn into scenes of anger, hopefulness and self-doubt that anyone who has known heartbreak can relate to. For a story about the tragedy of a failed marriage, Happens Every Day is enlightening and uplifting, devoid of bitterness and resentment, and reflective of a woman who has borne an immense burden and emerged victorious.”
— St. Petersburg Times
“What a strange and wonderful surprise: a gorgeous, funny, exuberant book about the disastrous end of a marriage. A loss like Gillies’s might happen all the time, but it’s rarely met with the passion, compassion, energy, and warmth that suffuse every page. With charming candor, she lays bare her sorrow and her joys, and finds a true — and instructive — talent for transformation and happiness.”
— Maile Meloy, author of Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter
“A smart, rueful memoir of love, betrayal, and survival.”
— O: The Oprah Magazine