Title: Eat Pray Love
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Genre: Fiction/ Romance
Source: Bookshelf
Rating: 5/5

My favourite quote; “People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.” 

I’ve read Eat Pray Love a few times and it just gets better every time so I thought I’d add in my review about it on my site.
The first time I picked up this book, I knew of a few people that had read it and recommended it but I was slightly put off by the story – a severely depressed woman who divorced her husband because she realised she didn’t love him anymore, and travelled around the world to get over it and find herself again. It seemed very emotional and boring for me as it was something I felt I couldn’t relate too. But I gave it a go, and found that I really did enjoy it!

The story is brilliant. It’s very personal and it was an experience viewing the world from someone else’s eyes. Going through a really difficult divorce and not knowing what was going to happen next. Feeling so depressed and wanting to end your life but not wanting to take anti-depressants so as to not give in to failure of having control over your own life. The experience of finding God and wanting to connect more with a spiritual being in order to find peace and balance again. Finally learning a different language because you wanted too rather than if it was useful, travelling to Italy to eat, travelling to India to pray, and travelling to Indonesia to meditate and eventually find love again with yourself and another. It was written like a diary not a biography of someone’s life so it made it feel real. I could relate to the story more than I realised even though I have never been searching for a divorce, I have never had a spiritual connection with God or meditated with a Guru, or even travelled anywhere alone. But I could feel everything she was feeling and knew it instantly. I can see why it is so loved by many and why this story is recommended to others.

Obviously now I want to travel somewhere and meditate alone in silence even though I feel I have a good balance with my life. I wouldn’t even mind having a spiritual connection of some kind.

“When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.” 

The characters are great, you feel like you are always making friends along the way, that you are never alone. It’s a real feel good story that will make you want to change your life. A story that I will continue to read again and again.

“You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That’s the only thing you should be trying to control.”

Goodreads Review: 
A celebrated writer’s irresistible, candid, and eloquent account of her pursuit of worldly pleasure, spiritual devotion, and what she really wanted out of life. 
Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be. 
To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world—all alone. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year. Her aim was to visit three places where she could examine one aspect of her own nature set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done that one thing very well. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure, learning to speak Italian and gaining the twenty-three happiest pounds of her life. India was for the art of devotion, and with the help of a native guru and a surprisingly wise cowboy from Texas, she embarked on four uninterrupted months of spiritual exploration. In Bali, she studied the art of balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. She became the pupil of an elderly medicine man and also fell in love the best way—unexpectedly. 
An intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society’s ideals. It is certain to touch anyone who has ever woken up to the unrelenting need for change.