Customer Reviews:
 Real Story, Real Person July 28, 2008
Yes, this book is a MUST HAVE! I too could not put it down (that's how I get with a book that grabs me). I read it all in the first week! Valerie has a way of telling her story that is so easy to read, so 'real', and so motivating!
Editor of Jennifer Winston's women's bestseller How to Snag a Guy and Keep Him Hooked: 99 Ways to Make Him Ache for You
 I had no idea! July 24, 2008
This book was a revealing look into the life of the "good girl" we grew up watching on TV. Valerie was very honest in telling us all about her life. I ended up liking her as a person and respecting her for what she has accomplished.
 Will Date Faster than a Newspaper July 23, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Curiously, although the frequent swearing in this book didn't bother me, the dated, ugly slang did. This book will date faster than a newspaper.
The author doesn't visit a friend, she "hangs" with him. They don't go out to dinner, they "grab some food." She "freaks out" at "frickin'" things.
When she reproduces her conversations with others, people seldom say, "Okay." It's always, "Cool." She doesn't vow to stop blurting out stupid things; she vows to "get her act together."
Two hundred and seventy-seven pages later, the reader is left with the feeling of having spent an exhausting evening with the high school friend from the seventies who never moved out of her parents' house. I almost expected her to invite me into a linoleum-floored basement to smoke a joint and watch "SNL." (After all, she quotes Roseanne Roseannadanna.)
The other, more important flaw in the book is her tiresome insecurity. The predictability of her actions and reactions is set after the book's first chapter. She feels fat, she feels wrong, she feels undesirable, she feels - oy. Couldn't she lie about feeling good about something, just to break up the monotony of this book? When she claims that her legs are good-looking (but only from the knees down, of course), it's too little, too late.
Good grief, the woman even feels wrong about how she feels about her feelings! She seems to have written this book to inspire people, but the reader wonders, inspire them to do what? Second-guess their every word and thought, and expect a round of applause for it?
Worst, nothing really happens in this book. Her husband's addictions make his behavior predictable and redundant: using, treatment, sober, relapse. And I cannot conjure a single memory of the twenty-plus TV movies she describes making. Her description of location shoots are deadly: She rides stationary bikes in hotel rooms.
It's a snooze, filled with lengthy descriptions of nothing in particular and slang so dated I suspect Tony Orlando edited the book.
 Not very inspiring July 21, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Poor little Valerie. I bought this book because I thought it would help be an inspiration to my daughter for loosing weight. Most people who have a weight problem would consider themselves lucky if they weighed 134 pounds! But Valerie made it sound like it was the end of the world. Yes, I'm sure that this would be a problem for an actress, but I don't think Valerie has a clue about what "normal" people go through in their challenge to loose weight. I found the rest of the book boring - I usually give a book 150 pages, if I still don't like it by then I close it and put in the pile to give away. I found that I couldn't wait to get to page 150 on this one!
"Gaining My Life Back?" Back from what? July 20, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I'm trying to decide whether I'm less for today's in-your-face paparazzi-pushing, lifestyles of the teen and tarty, or the ways of the '70s and '80s, when the only info fans were privy to was in the pages of "Teen Beat" and "16" magazines. Well, that and the picture painted by the PR machines promoting their stars the way they wanted them perceived, giving the public an untrue view of who they really were. (Remember, this was before cable programming, when TV shows were highly promoted by network talk shows and in the press, and before we got a lot of the behind-the-scenes paparazzi shots and TMZ videos of our faves partying at all hours.)
I was a huge fan of "One Day at a Time"--and Valerie Bertinelli was my favorite actor on the show. I could relate to her--Italian descent, cute but not beautiful, good-girl image, who married young and in love. At least that was my perception and the image the public was given of Valerie at the time. But this book by her is a bit disconcerting and gives us the true story of Valerie, her not-so-squeaky-clean ways and her rocky and rolly marriage to Eddie Van Halen. If you're looking for a light read, this book is perfect. Nothing too in-depth, not a lot of soul searching going on here. It is a wonderful piece of public relations for Jenny Craig, however. I would have liked to see a little more introspection. Bertinelli is not well educated although she is no dummy, but this book reads like not a whole lot more than a diary of this happened, then that happened, and then the other thing, oh, and I gained weight, without much deep thought. I don't agree with many of her decisions--the drinking and drugging and infidelity that came before her son was born is sad, but not all that difficult to understand given the Hollywood and rocker lifestyle, but some of her decisions post-Wolfie are perplexing, such as why she would leave her son with her drugging and drinking husband while she is in another state for months at a time. She found cocaine in Van Halen's wallet, transported on a flight he took with the boy to visit Bertinelli, but she doesn't confront him here. She is upset personally that he would do such a thing and put her son in danger, but she slips the packet back in the wallet--and Ed and Wolfie go on their merry way back to LA. Huh? She overly obsesses about gaining a couple pounds, but is able to look the other way when she knows her husband is putting her son's life at risk.
I suppose the moral of this story is that each of us has control of our own bodies and lives, and we are in the position to change what is wrong or go on living the way that makes us miserable. Not an uncommon premise for a celebrity book.
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