The Honesty Box: The warm and hopeful memoir about a marriage in freefall, making jam and the quiet rituals of rural life

by Lucy Brazier

'I read this book in two sit downs! It is filled with compassion. An honest look at navigating life, marriage, family, neurodiversity and veg.' Anna Maxwell Martin

'A truly beautiful, magical book – I urge you to give it to anyone having a midlife wobble, because Lucy is unashamed about showing her vulnerability and what it is to be human, a woman, a wife and a mum in the 21st century. Heart-breaking and heart-warming, but the ultimate message is one of never give up on the one you love.' Veronica Henry

"On National Divorce Day, my husband Steve and I decide to break up. After years of depression and mood swings (him) and hope and defeat (me) enough is, quite frankly, enough.

Until a chance remark triggers a chain of events leading to Steve's diagnosis of ADHD and autism. What follows is a year of discovery, denial, medication and salvation as we, our teenagers and even our beloved Golden Retriever, Margot, set out to embrace this new reality. But will my plan to start an amateur honesty box business from our tiny Devon village be the catalyst to bring us together, or drive us further apart?

This is about what it is like to try and rebuild a marriage. It is a funny, heart-wrenching, uplifting quest for truth, transformation and marrows.

I guess you could call it a love story too."

'A beautiful and much needed book about what it is like to be in a relationship with someone who is neurodivergent, and the challenges it can bring! Lucy's story highlights just how life changing a diagnosis can be, and how it can truly save relationships.' Rich and Rox Pink, @adhd_love_

Genres: Memoir

304 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 27, 2025

Reviews

[Beth Bonini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book was a salutary lesson for me. For one thing, it was a good reminder, (why do I still need to be reminded of this?), that glimpses into someone’s life - no matter how compellingly attractive those glimpses might seem - only ever tell part of the story. We never know what private pain someone is suffering.

Let me explain. For quite a few years I have been following Lucy Brazier on IG and admiring her beautifully written captions and photogenic Dorset lifestyle. Sunrises, delicious baked goods, hot chocolate and her wild swimming sessions with friends all feature - just as they do in this book, in fact. What (mostly) gets left out of IG, though, are the financial worries, the clapped-out car, the relentless rain and mud, the cold and damp, and the difficulties of living with a neurodivergent partner. This book - a sometimes bruisingly honest memoir of a marriage - fills in those gaps. I can only applaud Lucy and her husband Steve for their willingness to share their experience.

At the beginning of the book, having just survived the annual stress of Christmas and finding themselves seriously contemplating divorce, Lucy and Steve embark on two joint projects: one of them is an honesty box, and the other is the discovery that Steve has both ADHD and ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder).

”You don’t have to learn how to live with it. This is not your problem.”

When Steve says this to Lucy, at a point when he is still reeling from his diagnosis, I imagine that most people reading this book - and every single spouse/partner who has been in Lucy’s position - will be indignant (or even livid) on her behalf. When Lucy asks rhetorical questions like, “I know I have to make allowances, but where does my frustration go?” the reader entirely grasps her problem. She is specific about the ways that she has carried more than her half of the marriage over the years, not only having to work with Steve but also to work around him. Although the diagnosis is useful in many ways, it also means that one cannot feel anger, frustration and righteous indignation in quite the same way.

”Compassion is tough to muster when you are in survival mode, and parts of me have been stifled over the years.”

This book is educational in a variety of ways, and anyone reading it will learn more about about neurodivergent conditions like ADHD and ASD and how they are diagnosed and treated within the NHS. Although it is statistically common to have both disorders - I’ve most often seen the statistic of 30% - that has only been understood, or at least officially recognised, for a decade. Steve and Lucy are discovering more about neurodivergence at a time when there is a lot more awareness being raised about it, and that is both helpful and sometimes problematic.

I read this book from a particular slant of empathy and understanding and personal interest, so I cannot claim to be entirely objective in my analysis of it. From my perspective, it was an extremely relatable story and I found it highly absorbing. My own daughter was diagnosed with ADHD several years ago, in her late 20s, and I recognised many aspects of this couple’s experience. I’ve also suffered with the awareness that I could have parented her differently (ie, better) if I had better understood the way her brain functioned. Perhaps I could have been more compassionate, instead of so frustrated and angry - and, I’ll be honest, persecuted. I suspect that my ex-husband is neurodivergent, too - and I read, with a mixed feeling of guilt, relief and deep understanding, that 85% of marriages with a neurodivergent partner end in divorce.

Although the actual honesty box features throughout the book - and yes, there is a fair amount of detail about Lucy’s attempts to keep it filled with everything from vegetables and flowers to homemade hot-cross buns and pottery - I understood it more as a metaphor for their family’s personal journey. Early in the narrative, Lucy explains her obsession with honesty boxes and why she thinks they are a “powerful symbol of a generous, hopeful humanity.” They are a transaction that depends entirely on trust, much like entrusting readers (most of them strangers) with your most honest and vulnerable truth. Over and over again, Lucy and Steve discover that honesty tends to be rewarded with empathy and greater understanding. I sincerely hope that is also the case with the reception of this brave book.



Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing for providing me with an advance copy of this book. Its official release date is 27 February 2005.

[Hillary Trotter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a really amazing book. It was awesome to see the late diagnosis struggle from the other side. I related so much to both Lucy and Steve but in very different ways. This journey is challenging and destroying but also beautiful. Lucy did an awesome job of showing all the ugly and beautiful moments of this life. I recommend this book to everyone from now on. 

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely give 5 star reviews so why has this unusual book prompted me to do so? Because this memoir touched me personally, daring to broach a subject that I have never seen in print before. Being neurodivergent is one thing, being the support for someone who thinks "in their own space and time" is something else entirely.

It is deeply comforting to read of someone else who sometimes longs to be away from the responsibility of a partner who needs you to negotiate the world for them and is therefore, continually looking to you for understanding, help and support which is exhausting. Those occasional spaces when one can simply be oneself with other adults are a reminder that one's 'normal' is anything but.

However when you love someone, who provides a different kind of existence with a unique perspective on the world is both exciting and edged with adventure, would you really want to miss out and live with a partner for whom the quotidien would be somewhat boring by comparison?

This lovely book is also an insight into what it really means to move to the country and leave behind the easy comforts of metropolitan life, gaining so much from one way of life whilst losing access to the cultural wealth of a city.

Lucy Brazier illustrates just how hard it is to move from successful career woman to wife and mother. This theme is also one that is rarely described so vividly. The truth of the situation is that children ARE a career in themselves so anyone who says they combine both work and home life clearly enjoy a support network that allows that and are not doing it alone. For most women it is a battlefield to negotiate that constantly threatens to blow up.

Lastly this book reflects how it feels to be a woman in their 50's at the heart of a family, the chaotic period of ones life when the challenges are overwhelming. Fortunately reading this from the vantage point of old age, when everything has clarified and calmed, one knows that this too passes. However it should be required reading for all women of a similar age to reassure that those feelings are also totally normal.

A refreshing, honest, visceral depiction of a life, I loved this memoir.

[Karen Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this brilliant book - it was recommended by a friend and didn’t disappoint. Beautifully written, very personal and honest - yes a great title and very apt. Combines the reality of countryside living with an unusual year for the writer as she and her family come to terms with a new diagnosis of ADHD and ASD. Superb.

[Mark Rudd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this. I didn't expect this to be a true story when I saw the title.
It is a wonderful insight into how you live with people who have mental health problems.
The honesty box is a good title, as honesty is the true nature of this book
The author is totally open about her relation with her husband,

[Kari · Rating 3 out of 5]

This really did take me 3 months to read. I value the author and her husbands willingness to share their life— but it was hard for me to stay connected to the story—- which, like most lives was complex and layered.

[Bel Beggs · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A hard one to rate. LOVED the writing, such descriptive language. Also enjoyed the in depth look at a late in age diagnosis of ADHD and Autism. I just found there were some parts that dragged a little and could have been removed.

[Katy Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook. A very honest account of a family dealing with a neurodivergent diagnosis and the challenges that come with this. Beautifully written.

[Hilary Cockshaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook

[Chelsea Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly enjoyable book. It is honest and sincere addressing real life. I did struggle sometimes to focus, although I also have ADHD (how ironic).

[Jo Pollard · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5⭐️

[book_lover_kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

We join Lucy and her husband Steve in a year of discovery as they negotiate his recent diagnosis of autism and ADHD, along with dealing with family life in rural Devon and Lucy’s desire to create an ‘honesty box’ of produce from their garden as a way of helping the community.

This was a refreshingly honest look at what it’s like living with a neurodivergent partner and the strain it can put on a marriage. I loved how Lucy wasn’t scared to say out loud the things that I myself have thought in the past.

And while I don’t have green fingers I also enjoyed learning about the ups and downs of starting the honesty box, and have since found myself looking out for them.

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A humorous, gentle and honest account of a woman's experience of family life with kids fleeing the nest, menopause and a neurodivergence diagnosis in the mix. Reflective, thoughtful & relatable in many ways.