Mothers are supposed to love their children unconditionally, but what if they can’t? Your own mother doesn’t love you–what makes you think anyone else will? These words haunted the author and affected every decision she made. If she wasn’t good enough for her mother’s love, what was she worthy of?

In The Monster That Ate My Mommy, Jessica Aiken-Hall takes the reader on her quest to find love and uncover the root of her suffering. In this courageous memoir, we learn the importance of love and belonging, and the price paid when it’s out of reach.

This is one of the most moving and brave memoirs I have ever read–on par with The Liar’s Club (Mary Karr) and The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls). I was sucked in from the first sentence and remained riveted throughout. Aiken-Hall’s raw exploration and recounting of highly traumatic life events is tempered with the gentleness of hope and the strength of perseverance. This is a book of extreme importance in the canon of women’s memoir. Read it for the compelling story of survival: savor it for its lessons of grace and resilience.

–Sarah Felix Burns author of Jackfish, The Vanishing Village