TLC Blog Tour for "Half in Love" by Linda Gray Sexton

Half in Love by Linda Gray Sexton is her powerful and inspiring story of overcoming a legacy of suicide.

Linda Gray Sexton is the daughter of the famous poet Anne Sexton. She shares a little of what it was like growing up with her mother who was in and out of mental institutions, and who had attempted suicide several times before she did take her life at the young age of 45. As Linda grew up, she began to show signs of mental illness also, and she also attempted suicide repeatedly.

In this book, Linda is very open, and very courageously tells her story in the hopes of helping others. She suffered from depression and mental illness much of her life and it took a long time to find the right doctors who took the proper care of her. It also took time before she was ready.  I was drawn to this book and her story and I found her writing to be so beautiful. I can't imagine what all she has been through and I have such tremendous respect for her to be so open and to pour everything out the way that she has in order to try to help others.

I very highly recommend this book. The writing is fabulous. Linda so intimately opens herself up in order to reach out and offer hope to others who have been touched by suicide and depression. She offers her story of healing and recovery. I have been so moved by reading this book that I would love to get ahold of her other previous as well! She is an amazing writer and an amazing person.

You can go here and follow along with all the blog tour stops.



Book Summary:

Despite experiencing the agony of witnessing her mother’s multiple suicide attempts, the last of which was successful, Linda Gray Sexton found herself gripped by the same strong tentacles of mental anguish. Falling into the familiar grooves of her mother’s relentless depression, Sexton tries once, twice, three times to kill herself—even though she is a daughter, sister, wife, and most importantly, a mother.


Sexton unsparingly describes her struggle to escape the magnetism of her mother and the undertow of depression that engulfed her life. Her powerful prose drags readers into her imperviously dark mental state. It conveys her urgent need to alleviate the internal pain, a need that becomes compulsive and considers no one.

But unlike her mother, hers is a story of triumph. Through the help of family, therapy, and medicine, Sexton confronted deep-seated issues, outlived her mother, and curbed the haunting cycle of suicide she once seemed destined to inherit.

Over a million people kill themselves annually–and their families, too, are prisoners of their depression and suicidal urges. Half in Love speaks for them all.


Buy this book here.



Author Bio:

Linda Gray Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1953 and graduated from Harvard University in 1975. She is the daughter of the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Anne Sexton, and has edited several books of her mother’s poetry and a book of her mother’s letters, as well as writing a memoir about her life with her mother, “Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back To My Mother, Anne Sexton.” “Rituals,” “Mirror Images,” “Points of Light,” and “Private Acts” are her four published and widely read novels. “Points of Light” was made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame Special for television.

“Searching for Mercy Street” was named a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and reviewed to overwhelming critical acclaim. In the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani described the book this way: “Powerful and affecting…a candid, often painful, depiction of a daughter’s struggles to come to terms with her powerful and emotionally troubled mother. Sexton writes with compelling urgency and candor…a disturbing portrait of a mercurial, impossible and magnetic woman.”

Join Linda’s community of fans and learn more about her at her official website.



Thank you to Linda Gray Sexton to providing me with a copy of this book for review.


Blessings,