Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Perfectly Imperfect

by Valerie Bertinelli

From beloved actress and New York Times bestselling author Valerie Bertinelli, her most vulnerable book yet offering wisdom hard-won through divorce, menopause, and generational pain, with a powerful message of self-acceptance and embracing the past with compassion.

With her signature warmth and disarming humor, the beloved actress and New York Times bestselling author strips away the polished façade and shares what it’s really like to grow older, love harder, and start over. Now in her mid-sixties, Valerie reflects on the hard-won lessons of aging, self-worth, and letting go. From her experiences with menopause, relationships, and family trauma, she writes with clarity and compassion about the insecurities that have haunted her for shame and anxiety about her body, and the false belief that her value depended on perfection. Through it all, Valerie reflects on the quiet, daily work of self-acceptance—the kind that doesn’t make headlines but changes lives. Getting Naked isn’t just a story of survival. It’s a reckoning—with her past, her family history, and the generational pain that shaped her. It’s about the myths we believe when we’re young—about beauty, love, success—and how we carry them until they break us open. It’s about unlearning the script that says women must please, endure, and stay silent.

The result is a deeply personal, unexpectedly funny, and profoundly uplifting look at the inner journey we all share. Getting Naked isn’t about vulnerability for vulnerability’s sake. It’s about finally letting go of the need to be perfect, quieting the harsh inner critic, and choosing compassion over judgment. After all, it’s never too late to make peace with yourself—and to fall madly in love with the perfectly imperfect person you already are.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Biography, Autobiography, Self Help, Ebooks

240 pages, Hardcover

Published March 10, 2026

About the author

Valerie Bertinelli is the host of her own daytime series Valerie’s Home Cooking and co-hosts Kids Baking Championship on the Food Network. The two-time Golden Globe award-winning actress takes her fans into her kitchen with her new cookbook “Valerie’s Home Cooking” (Oxmoor House, an imprint of Time Inc. Books, October 2017). Her fun flavor combinations, like Brown Sugar Sriracha Bacon Bites, Lobster BLTs, and Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese Croutons, transform traditional classics into crave-worthy and exciting new dishes to enjoy with friends and family. Bertinelli first became a household name for her role as Barbara on CBS’s long-running series, One Day at a Time. Over the years, her career expanded from acting to include hosting, spokesperson, business entrepreneur and New York Times best-selling author. She has also helped develop, produce, and star in several television movies and mini-series, and in August 2012 she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She most recently starred as Melanie Moretti in TV Land’s critically acclaimed sitcom Hot in Cleveland.

Reviews

[Linden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valerie reflects on her life, noting again that we are too focused on appearance, and regretting all of the time she spent when younger obsessing about weight. Disappointments, like her cooking show's cancellation, personal challenges, and her two divorces are offset by finding other sources of joy in her life. I was conflicted by the cover (the author discreetly unclothed) which I suppose echoes the title, but I thought a better option might have been Valerie in a mirror, which she mentions frequently.

[Martine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adore Valerie Bertinelli. Everything she says and does is 5* for me. She is a beautiful and genuinely kind person.

[Martin Maenza · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Morrow provied an early galley for review.

I have been a fan of hers since the 1970's and read her previous book Losing It back in the day too. We're around the same age, so I tend to think of her as "my generation". I am always eager to hear more from her.

This time around, she shares a collection of "essays" focusing on aspects of her life - topics that all of us as we go through our own lives. They are relatable and so is her discussions of each one. I found it easy to "hear" the words in her distinctive voice. It was like having a conversation with a long-time friend.

It is nice to hear "real talk" from someone who has been part of the pop culture sphere for most of her (and my) life.

[༺ Jason ༻ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This should have been called Reflections. If you like her work you enjoy her self reflections on the many topics we call life.

[Ursula · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can’t put my finger on why I disliked this book so much. But if I had to sum it up in a word, that word would be “irritating.”

All throughout, I felt Bertinelli was talking AT me — sometimes even talking DOWN to me — rather than talking TO me, as the best memoirists do. If a memoir is successful, it makes you feel like you’re having a conversation with a friend, someone you’d want to spend time with. After reading this book, I have absolutely no desire to ever meet Bertinelli — and that’s as a long-time fan of her work for everything from “One Day at a Time” to “Hot in Cleveland.”

Credit where credit is due, Bertinelli does write just like she speaks — an admirable goal of most writers. But that’s part of the problem here. She’s always “on” in this book, just as she is during her frenetic TV appearances promoting it. A couple of chapters in and I found myself internally crying, “Uncle! Enough already with the ‘witty’ repartee!”

I enjoy sarcasm as much as the next person but her repeated attempts at such snarky humor landed flat. Worse yet, she comes across as an annoying “know it all,” who after having spent some in time in therapy now considers herself an expert capable of diagnosing others.

This is not to say she doesn’t make some interesting points about aging — like, “What does it mean to no longer be young but still not be old?” But it’s hard to appreciate anything she has to say given the way she says it.

I suppose it should come as no surprise that a memoir written by an actress is riddled with narcissism. Humble brags abound. Referring to the bikini she wore when she turned 50 for a Weight Watchers ad campaign she appeared in, Bertinelli decries, “I’m still annoyed that [it] was a a Size L. A large! I weighed 122 pounds and am five feet four inches tall. How does that equate to a large?” Cue the violins, please.

This book also would have benefited from a stronger editor to curtail the rambling non sequiturs. The chronic tangents, which Bertinelli at one point acknowledges she is guilty of, were exhausting.

This book is all over the place and yet doesn’t seem to go anywhere. She throws in quotes from Jane Austen and Rumi, presumably in an effort to sound more cerebral, only to misidentify the latter Persian poet as Indian. My guess is her only knowledge of Rumi comes from what she’s learned on social media, where it’s clear from her incessant references to Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, she spends an inordinate amount of time.

It’s ironic that Bertinelli claims her book’s title, “Getting Naked,” was intended to reflect her not holding anything back. Indeed, in her tv appearances to promote the book she reveals her most stunning disclosure that she is a survivor of child sexual abuse. Yet in the book, she only has a brief reference to it to towards the end, as if she seemingly reluctantly included it at someone’s prodding to do so. I don’t want to make light of someone’s pain, especially regarding something as traumatic as being sexually assaulted at 11 years of age. But her failure to fully explore the ramifications of such a devastating experience in a memoir whose stated purpose is full disclosure almost made it read either as an afterthought or as if she only included it for its shock factor. On a much lighter note, readers who may have been hoping to learn how her recent highly publicized 10-month relationship with a man she met on Instagram came to an abrupt end will be sadly disappointed for he is ghosted here.

Bottom line… Other than her unclothed body on the dust jacket cover photo, “Getting Naked” doesn’t reveal much.

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

The queen of too much information writes another book about her quest to be comfortable in her own skin. Well, the first thing I would tell Ms. Bertinelli is this. If you choose to put your ‘naked body’ on your book cover, and the books message is how to forgive, accept and move on— do not put a badly photoshopped image of your pricy verniers, made up eyes and unlined face harking back to an image of you in your mid-40’s. The b/w’s inside the book are so much more attractive. Any one of those would have been an ideal cover. Embrace your aging like punk queen Patti Smith, not Christie Brinkley.

It TOTALLY goes against the theme Val is trying so hard to get others onboard with.

That being said; yes she still loves Ed, Wolfie & his wife. Husband # 2 is mentioned, but not by name. There is no mention of the disastrous publicly humiliating “I’m In Love” romance with an InstaGram writer/fan this past year.

The good parts I related to. The Italian parents, the cheating father, the no sex education, the numerous brothers, self image, the naïveté of one’s 20’s and throw in a breast implant reveal too. Some fans will love it.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced reader copy.

[Sarah Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valerie Bertinelli
Harper Wave, 2026
pp. 240
ISBN: 9780063429086

Disclosure: A complimentary review copy of this title was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review. This disclosure does not influence the objectivity or independence of the analysis presented herein.

Overview

Valerie Bertinelli’s Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Perfectly Imperfect (2026) arrives as perhaps the most searching, intellectually honest, and emotionally courageous work of the beloved actress and New York Times bestselling author’s literary career. Published by Harper Wave, this deeply personal memoir positions itself not as a conventional celebrity autobiography — replete with glamorized anecdote and curated self-mythology — but as a sustained, rigorously honest reckoning with the accumulated weight of shame, perfectionism, generational trauma, and the particular and often invisibilized suffering that accompanies the experience of being a woman navigating midlife in a culture that systematically devalues what it cannot commodify. At 240 pages, the work is economical without being thin, achieving a compression of emotional and intellectual content that speaks to the confidence and maturity of its author’s literary voice. This review argues that Getting Naked constitutes a significant and timely contribution to the growing body of feminist life writing that interrogates the cultural scripts imposed upon women, and that it merits serious scholarly attention alongside its inevitable and well-deserved popular readership.

Synopsis and Structural Overview

Bertinelli organizes her memoir around the central metaphor embedded in its title: the act of stripping away — of removing the carefully maintained performative facades that women are socialized to construct and maintain at considerable psychological and physical cost. Now in her mid-sixties, Bertinelli writes from a vantage point of hard-earned perspective, reflecting upon a life shaped by the competing and often irreconcilable demands of public visibility, private suffering, relational complexity, and the insidious internalization of cultural ideals of feminine perfection.

The narrative moves through several interconnected thematic territories: the physiological and psychological experience of menopause and its attendant cultural stigma; the emotional aftermath of divorce and the slow, non-linear work of reconstructing identity in its wake; the complex inheritance of family trauma and the mechanisms by which generational pain is transmitted, absorbed, and — with sufficient courage and consciousness — interrupted. Throughout, Bertinelli writes with a quality of voice that is simultaneously disarmingly intimate and intellectually precise, her signature warmth and humor functioning not as a deflection from the memoir’s darker territories but as an affirmation that wit and wisdom need not be mutually exclusive.

Structurally, the memoir resists both strict chronology and tidy thematic compartmentalization, opting instead for an associative and reflective organizational logic that mirrors the actual, nonlinear nature of genuine self-inquiry. This formal choice is significant: it signals from the outset that Getting Naked is not interested in the redemption arc-shaped narrative of conventional memoir, wherein suffering is retrospectively organized into meaningful lessons leading inevitably toward resolution. Instead, Bertinelli presents the work of self-acceptance as genuinely ongoing — a daily, quiet, imperfect practice rather than a singular transformative event. This is a more intellectually honest and ultimately more useful framework than the triumphalist narrative arc that dominates much of the popular self-help and memoir marketplace.

Thematic Analysis

I. The Performance of Perfection and the Politics of Female Visibility

The memoir’s most intellectually productive thematic concern is its sustained interrogation of what might be termed the perfectionism imperative — the deeply ingrained cultural expectation that women, particularly those who occupy public space, must present an idealized, controlled, and flawlessly managed version of themselves as the precondition for social acceptance, professional legitimacy, and relational worth. Bertinelli, whose career has placed her under the relentless scrutiny of public gaze since early adolescence, is uniquely positioned to examine the psychological costs of this imperative with both authority and specificity.

Her analysis of how this perfectionism imperative operates — how it is absorbed in girlhood, reinforced through media representation and interpersonal dynamics, and ultimately internalized as a set of punishing self-directed demands — resonates productively with established feminist theoretical frameworks. Scholars such as Sandra Bartky, whose Femininity and Domination (1990) examines the disciplinary practices through which women are encouraged to surveil and regulate their own bodies and behavior, and Naomi Wolf, whose The Beauty Myth (1991) documents the instrumentalization of beauty standards as mechanisms of social control, provide useful academic contexts through which to position Bertinelli’s personal testimony. Getting Naked does not operate as an academic text, nor does it aspire to; nonetheless, its experiential intelligence speaks directly to the lived dimensions of the phenomena these scholars theorize.

Particularly striking is Bertinelli’s candid examination of how her public identity — specifically the cultural narrativization of her body and her weight — has served as a site of external projection and control throughout her life. She writes with searing clarity about the shame and anxiety that have attended her experience of her own physical self, illuminating the extraordinary psychological violence that is routinely visited upon women, and particularly upon women in the public eye, through the cultural apparatus of body scrutiny and commentary. This willingness to name and examine the specific mechanics of that violence, rather than retreating into the generalized language of “body positivity,” constitutes one of the memoir’s most significant intellectual contributions.

II. Menopause, Aging, and the Cultural Erasure of Midlife Women

Getting Naked makes a notable and timely contribution to the still-underdeveloped body of literary and cultural work that takes seriously the experience of female midlife and, specifically, menopause. Bertinelli’s reflections on this physiological transition are remarkable for their combination of unflinching specificity and broader cultural analysis. She documents not merely the physical dimensions of menopausal experience but the cultural silence and institutional indifference that have historically surrounded it — the ways in which women are expected to navigate a profoundly significant life transition without adequate medical support, cultural recognition, or social permission to name their experience as meaningful.

This thematic strand invites productive dialogue with emerging scholarly and popular literature on the cultural politics of female aging, including works such as Mary Beard’s Women & Power (2017) and Germaine Greer’s intellectually generative The Change (1991), as well as more recent medical and cultural interventions into the menopause discourse. Bertinelli’s memoir adds to this conversation the irreplaceable weight of specific, embodied personal testimony — the kind of experiential data that theoretical and clinical frameworks, however sophisticated, cannot fully supply. In choosing to write about menopause with candor, humor, and intellectual seriousness, Bertinelli performs an act of cultural courage that has practical as well as literary significance.

Her reflections on aging more broadly — on the particular grief and liberation that attend the passage from the culturally valorized season of visible femininity into the less socially legible territory of later womanhood — are among the memoir’s most emotionally resonant passages. There is in these sections a quality of hard-won wisdom that distinguishes genuine reflection from performed profundity, and it is here that Bertinelli’s voice is at its most distinctive and most valuable.

III. Generational Trauma and the Inheritance of Pain

A third and deeply significant thematic strand concerns itself with the mechanics and consequences of intergenerational trauma — the ways in which pain, shame, and dysfunctional relational patterns are transmitted across generations within family systems, often without the conscious awareness of those who carry and perpetuate them. Bertinelli approaches this territory with considerable psychological sophistication, demonstrating an evident familiarity with the frameworks of trauma-informed therapeutic practice and translating those frameworks into accessible, experientially grounded personal narrative.

Her willingness to examine her family of origin with both compassion and clarity — to hold simultaneously the love she bears for those who shaped her and the honest recognition of the ways in which that shaping produced lasting harm — reflects a level of psychological maturity and intellectual courage that distinguishes the memoir from both the hagiographic family narratives and the more sensationalist accounts of familial dysfunction that populate much of the celebrity memoir marketplace.

Bertinelli is neither a victim seeking absolution nor an accuser seeking retribution; she is a thoughtful woman engaged in the genuinely difficult work of understanding, without either excusing or condemning.

This thematic strand engages productively with the growing body of scientific and clinical literature on intergenerational trauma transmission, including the landmark work of researchers such as Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score, 2014) and the broader epigenetic trauma research that has emerged from scholars including Rachel Yehuda. While Getting Naked is not a clinical text, Bertinelli’s personal testimony illuminates the lived dimensions of these theoretical frameworks in ways that enrich both the memoir’s emotional impact and its intellectual usefulness.

IV. Self-Acceptance as Practice, Not Destination

Perhaps the memoir’s most philosophically significant contribution lies in its sustained resistance to what might be termed the destination fallacy of self-help discourse — the pervasive and ultimately harmful cultural narrative that presents psychological healing and self-acceptance as endpoints to be achieved through sufficient effort, rather than as ongoing, imperfect, daily practices. Bertinelli is admirably clear-eyed about the difference between genuine self-acceptance and its performative approximation, and she writes with particular acuity about the ways in which even the discourse of self-acceptance can be colonized by the perfectionism it ostensibly opposes.

Her framing of the work of self-acceptance as quiet, unspectacular, and fundamentally non-linear — as something that happens not in dramatic moments of revelation but in the accumulated weight of small, daily choices to meet oneself with compassion rather than judgment — reflects a philosophical maturity that distinguishes the memoir from the more triumphalist and prescriptive self-help literature with which it might superficially be grouped. This is a significant intellectual distinction that merits scholarly recognition. Bertinelli is not selling a program or a methodology; she is bearing honest witness to a process, and therein lies both the memoir’s greatest challenge to conventional publishing categories and its most significant contribution to the broader cultural conversation about women’s inner lives.

Voice, Style, and Literary Craft

Bertinelli’s prose is characterized by a clarity, warmth, and rhythmic assurance that speaks to a writer fully in command of her literary voice. Her signature humor operates not as a distancing mechanism but as an act of genuine hospitality — an invitation to the reader into difficult emotional territory through the shared recognition of absurdity and imperfection. This tonal balance — the capacity to be simultaneously funny, vulnerable, clear-eyed, and compassionate — is considerably more difficult to achieve in practice than it appears on the page and represents one of the memoir’s most distinctive literary accomplishments.

The writing is direct without being reductive, personal without being indulgent, and emotionally engaged without sacrificing the intellectual precision that the subject matter demands. Bertinelli demonstrates a particular gift for the precise articulation of interior experience — for finding language adequate to states of being that most of us feel but struggle to name — and this gift is the memoir’s most consistently valuable quality. It is the quality that transforms personal testimony into literature of broader significance and utility.

Critical Considerations

In the spirit of scholarly evenhandedness, certain limitations of the work merit brief acknowledgment. Readers seeking a conventionally structured memoir, with clearly delineated chronological narrative architecture and explicit thematic resolution, may find the memoir’s more associative and reflective organizational logic occasionally digressive or insufficiently cohesive. Additionally, the memoir’s deliberate resistance to explicit prescriptive framework — its refusal to offer actionable steps or systematic methodology — while intellectually honest and philosophically defensible, may frustrate readers who approach the text with self-help rather than literary expectations.

These observations, however, are more accurately characterized as genre-category questions than as substantive literary criticisms. Readers who approach Getting Naked on its own terms — as a sustained act of literary self-inquiry rather than a prescriptive guide to personal transformation — will find its resistance to formulaic resolution to be one of its greatest intellectual and emotional strengths.

Situating the Work Within Contemporary Feminist Life Writing

Getting Naked situates itself comfortably within the flourishing contemporary tradition of feminist life writing that includes works by writers such as Glennon Doyle (Untamed, 2020), Brené Brown (The Gifts of Imperfection, 2010), and Mary Karr (The Art of Memoir, 2015), each of whom has, in different registers and with different emphases, contributed to the cultural reimagining of what women’s autobiographical writing can be and do. What distinguishes Bertinelli’s contribution from these comparators is the particular combination of public visibility and private vulnerability she brings to the enterprise — her willingness to use her extraordinarily well-known public persona not as a platform for brand management but as a site of genuine self-examination and cultural critique.

In this respect, Getting Naked represents not merely a personal memoir but an implicit argument about what celebrity autobiography can and should aspire to be: a form of honest public witness that uses the amplification of the public platform in the service of shared human understanding rather than individual mythologization.

Conclusion

Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Perfectly Imperfect is a deeply accomplished, intellectually serious, and emotionally generous memoir that succeeds admirably on multiple registers. It is a candid and courageous act of personal testimony, a thoughtful contribution to feminist discourse on aging, perfectionism, and trauma, and a finely crafted piece of literary nonfiction whose voice is both unmistakably distinctive and genuinely useful. Valerie Bertinelli has written her most significant and sustained book — a work that transcends the categories of celebrity memoir and popular self-help to offer something considerably more valuable and lasting: honest, clear-eyed, compassionate witness to the interior life of a woman who has done the difficult and ongoing work of becoming, imperfectly and beautifully, herself.

Getting Naked is unreservedly recommended to academic readers with interests in feminist life writing, the cultural politics of aging and female embodiment, intergenerational trauma, and the literature of self-acceptance. It is equally and warmly recommended to any reader who has ever struggled, quietly and without fanfare, toward the radical and revolutionary act of making peace with themselves. It is, in every meaningful sense, a book worth reading — and worth reading carefully.

A complimentary review copy of this title was received from the publisher, Harper Wave. This disclosure does not influence the objectivity, independence, or conclusions of this review.

Rating: ★★★★ / 5

- Prairie Fox 🦊📖
The full review can also be found here: https://prairiefoxreads.blogspot.com/...

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

While it’s the most uplifting of her books, she still writes in flowery “therapy-speak” that rings tedious at best, sanctimonious at best. Her journal entries were the worst. Who writes like that in their journal? While Bertinelli is no doubt authentic and sincere, I found myself eye rolling often wondering if she is indeed, for real.

[Kimberley Weaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always love listening to Valerie Bertinelli’s memoirs. I grew up with that voice and have watched pretty much everything she’s done (except the cooking show- she won Emmys for that show, why did they fire her?!). Anyway, I was happy to catch up with Valerie since her last book, which dealt a lot with EVH’s death. I smiled and cried through this book with all of the personal growth and reflection she shared with us. I was sad to hear her previous relationship didn’t work out and was devastated to learn of her sexual abuse as a child. I watched her interview with Drew to discuss it further.
In the meantime, I’ll just be sitting here waiting for her next book!
*Thanks to Harper and NetGalley for the free copy

[Barbara Powell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first memoir of Valeries and it was very interesting to read because it wasnt all celebrities and famous life It has those moments, but it was more about real life events that most women could relate to. Dealing with things like memo, grown up kids, divorce facial hair, body image and things like that that you picture famous people dont really have to deal with but then you remember that theyre humans too. She talks about them as though shes a friend sitting on the couch having coffee with you, and I really liked that. It was down to earth, not preachy and all the disappointments she's had in her life were something I just never thought about for her. To me she's always smiling and happy so it was nice (although nice feels like the wrong word-maybe refreshing is better) to see someone be so honest with their feelings.
Thanks to Harper Wave and NetGalley for this eArc in exchange for my review

[Linda Smiff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve never read or listened to a VB book before. Maybe if I had I’d know that she’s a bit too bubbly and practiced in discussing her pain. From the beginning it sounded off and I couldn’t figure out why. Lots to say but no true depth. I’d love to hear the pain and how she got through it instead of trite responses.
Still enjoy her though.

[Juli Hewell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good memoir but feels a little redundant.

[Carol Engler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is stories comprise a panorama of reflection and self-discovery. Sketches of everyday vulnerability lead into not-so-everyday confrontations with truths about ourselves. Somewhat relatable.

[Danis Miller-Bucholz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the opportunity to meet Valerie at one of her first stops on her tour promoting this new memoir. She read a bit from the book, did a question and answer session with a moderator from the independent bookstore sponsoring the event, then took random questions from the audience. Afterwards, audience members who had purchased a signed first edition of the book could meet her and get a photo taken with her. She was fun and engaging as a speaker, and although I have not read any of the other books she's written, I found this one very interesting. I'm a few years younger than her, and I grew up watching her on the tv show One Day at a Time. I've always sort of loosely followed her career. This book is written in a conversational way, with each chapter beginning with a selfie of her and a quote from one of her journals. The quote from the journal serves to foreshadow some theme or issue she then discusses in this chapter, and each chapter is basically a short personal essay. She focuses on issues such as self-acceptance, aging, love, relationships and childhood trauma. She seems authentic and discloses quite a bit about her life and how she has struggled to love and accept herself as she is over the years. I know the release of this memoir has been timed with the release of her newly formed social media platform/podcast (or vice versa...the release of the platform was timed with her tour and publication of the memoir) and some have been critical of that aspect, but she doesn't mention her new social media platform in the book at all. Overall, this memoir seemed honest, real, and revealing. This would be a great book club read or a great beach/vacation read, as it is a short book but includes a lot to think and talk about.

[Tara Cignarella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book #45
Getting Naked by Valerie Bettinelli
5 Stars (3.6 Amazon 4.04 Goodreads)
Release Date 3/10/26
61,000 words
Audio
#whiskersandwordsbookreview #onesentencereview #celebritymemoir


--------Loved this one as I did her other recent release, real, honest, human, and helpful real-life feelings delivered with easy and laughs.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second or maybe third memoir/book of essays by Valerie Bertinelli that I have read. She has a lot of good stuff to say about aging, accepting oneself and learning from our experiences. This was a quick read which I enjoyed. I listened to the audiobook as that is my favorite way to experience biography/memoir.

[W. Frazier · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Audio Book) I grabbed this book on impulse from my library’s hot new release shelf. And although it strays from the autobiographical format I expected it does offer a whole lot of honesty in the self-help lane. Bertinelli is completely approachable in her writing style, her anecdotes resonate in such a clear and common sense way. I had lost track of her journey over the years, decades really, but this book gives off that bubbly spark I remember. And as a standalone, with very little knowledge or reference about her life, it sits well. She reflects on her piles of counseling but doesn’t get mired in a blame game. And it’s this positive tone along with the relatable honesty that lets this book shine over other celebrity efforts. It was a nice detour for me. Bertinelli voices her own audio book and the concise 6-hour length is perfect.

[Allison Mclean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Valerie Bertinelli. I have ever sense wanting to be Barbara Cooper from One Day at a Time. I loved this book and how real she was about her life. And how happy she seems to be now on her own.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would like a friend like Valerie yet we are vastly different. In many ways we are the same. She has come full circle and this book is so revealing. I grew up with her and I have always enjoyed her work. A few chapters really hit home and were hard to read because I could relate so much.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. The book was fine, it just wasn’t for me.

[Audrey Natale]

Bought the audiobook to listen to on my long drives. It’s more of a reflection on her life, which is fine, but I prefer chronological biographies.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you @netgalley for my audiobook advanced copy. I flew through this in 3 days! Bonus Valerie narrating the book! It’s like chatting with a friend. Five stars for me for sure!

[Heidi Beall · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We are a lot better, stronger, braver and loving than we believe.” Yes Val, we are!

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 1/2 ⭐️ rounded up

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable read. Nothing profound or that I haven’t heard before but having grown up with her in the public eye, I appreciate her genuine spirit which was so apparent throughout the book.

[Tina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Firstly, i admire Valerie Bertinelli for always being so honest and open in her books as well as in her various social media posts and in her life in general.

It's hard for me to think that she is 65 because she sooo does not look it.

We have shared many similar struggles, and I am just a few years younger than she is. I mention this because all these commonalities, of course, affect my review of this book.

I would classify this as a book of essays with some self-help thrown in. it's a bit of a stretch to call it a memoir. I was a tad disappointed in this as I would love to read another memoir based on her life since the last book.

My thoughts.....Bertinelli is extremely hard on herself. Many of the things she mentions, such as remembering all the events, in her past, which have caused and continue to cause her misery today, is something I believe we can all relate to.

This is the strength in this book - Bertinelli shares feelings and thoughts that many of us have, and it makes me feel better knowing that I am not alone. Each chapter is a little ray of hope for all of us.

Her struggles with her weight, her two divorces, losing her job, the death of her parents and how it felt to be raised by them, as well as the death of Eddie Van Halen are front and center here.


The things I loved:

Her description of how free she felt swimming in her pool was very empowering. As she described it, I could almost feel the calmness she felt at that moment.

Her love for Wolfie and his wife are obvious, as well as her love for Eddie Van Halen. These two (now3) have been a theme in all of Bertinelli's books. I have never heard her utter one bad word about Eddie Van Halen and its very obvious she still loves him. Not so much her second husband and I get it, I have no love loss for most of my relationships either, but there is always THAT one person.....

She mentions worrying about $, and I was very surprised at this. I am guilty of just assuming she has tons of money and while she questions many aspects of her life, she is doing it in a (what I assume) is a beautiful house, surrounded by lots of Hollywood friends and job offers all over the place. The 'what does she really have to complain about' thought did cross my mind, but everytime I read a book by Bertinelli, I get myself in check because, obviously you do not need to be wildly rich to have problems. I keep forgetting that, and Valerie Bertinelli is certainly not a spoiled actress without a clue about real life, which we so often see in Hollywood. In fact, she could easily be our best friend - because that is the overall vibe she gives out.

I do hope that Bertinelli writes another memoir and that she keeps doing what she is doing. It helps.

[Evelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Valerie Bertinelli and there were many things I liked about this book. Her personality seems to really come through, and a lot of it seems like listening to a friend, which is how I think she intended it. The writing is quite good, and her narration very appealing, although I found that listening at 1.25 speed seemed about right. There were some parts, like the passages where she talks at length to her body or to her pets, that were a bit much for me, but I kind of chalked it up to a quirky personality.

But here was the problem for me. I absolutely understand that she does not have to reveal anything she doesn't want to; we have no right to demand she share private things she'd like to keep private. However, how many people would have read this hybrid self-help book/memoir if it weren't for the fact that she's famous and potential readers are interested in her life, and probably wouldn't be interested in a similar book by an unknown person? I think she generally does a good job of navigating the path between revealing enough while respecting the privacy of the non-public people in her life, but there was one thing that I thought was way too "cute" and so annoying that it really brought down my opinion of the book. The audience for this book is surely aware of a relationship she was in two years ago and quite public about at the time. She skirts around this--again, her right--although there is a part where she reveals the contents of a rather brutal phone conversation, which one can assume to have been with him. But what was really annoying was where she talks about wanting a romantic relationship, needing someone to cuddle with at night, would she ever find love again, etc. and then in the spring of 2024, which is exactly when the well-publicized relationship started, she says it happened; she fell in love while shopping at Trader Joe's. And then, in what feels like a slap to the reader who was rooting for her, she builds up to the the big reveal, only to say that it was Trader Joe's Trio of Soft Licorice Twists that she fell in love with. This just seemed entirely unnecessary and disrespectful to the reader. I would have given it 4 stars, but because of that cheap trick, I'm downgrading to 3. Thank you to NetGalley and HarperAdult Audio for the e-ARC of this book.

[Susan McAulay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a memoir by Valerie Bertinelli, who was in the classic television sitcom, One Day At a Time which aired from 1975 to 1981. She is also known for being married to Eddie Van Halen, a guitarist and songwriter for the heavy metal group Van Halen, and for having struggles with her weight thereafter. This is not to be glib but is to jog memories and to provide a little context to those that might not know who she is.
I loved this memoir. However, I am precisely in the audience to which this book is marketed. This book will have little or no appeal to men or to younger women who would have no idea who she is. Valerie and I are the exact same age and even though there are several differences between us, the commonality of age and generation created an instant rapport between us such that I felt like she was talking directly to me. Valerie and I grew up together and I was raised on One Day At a Time and although the show has not necessarily aged well (I did go back and watch it at some point a few years ago), I loved it at the time. I also think that if you did not watch the show, you will miss a great many of the references, although it still might speak to women of a certain age, regardless. Men will not want to read this and should be forewarned that there is a chapter addressing menopause and its effects (though this was the least interesting section to me since I am one of the few women I know of who had no symptoms of it at all so I had trouble relating to it).
The other thing about this memoir is that it also serves as a how-to book in some ways. Valerie is giving the benefit of her experience as someone who has struggled with self-image and weight, and most of us that are in our 60s can relate to this. Even though she is a celebrity, she seems very down to earth, showing us that she has the same problems that others have. Although she did not graduate high school (who knew) and was married to a rock star, she is also a cat lady and is as insecure as the rest of us are. While this memoir will have a limited audience, it speaks to its targets well.
Thanks to Net Galley and William Morrow for providing me with advanced copies of this book. All of the opinions herein are my own. Four and a half stars, rounded up to five.

[Kellie Welty · Rating 5 out of 5]

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I have been a fan of Valerie Bertinelli since she was 15 years old playing Barbara on One Day at a Time. Like so many people, I feel like I grew up watching her. Over the last several years, though, I’ve come to appreciate her in an entirely different way through her incredibly honest and open posts on Instagram. Valerie has a way of showing up exactly as she is — raw, vulnerable, and real — and that authenticity instantly drew me in.

Listening to her read this book on Audible felt less like listening to a celebrity memoir and more like sitting down with a friend who is bravely speaking the truth about life. At times it honestly felt like she was putting words to thoughts I’ve had but never quite been able to articulate myself. Reading it was almost like looking into my own soul.

What I appreciated most is how refreshingly honest she is about the struggles so many of us share — the insecurities, the self-doubt, the fears that creep in even when life looks good from the outside. There is something incredibly comforting about realizing you’re not alone in those feelings.

Valerie’s openness is both disarming and inspiring. Her story is relatable, heartfelt, and deeply human. If you’ve ever wrestled with self-worth, aging, relationships, or simply trying to be kinder to yourself, this book will resonate.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Audible version and highly, highly recommend it.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Perfectly Imperfect by Valerie Bertinelli is another great autobiography that I truly enjoyed.

This is another great installment from this author and she continues to give further insight into her life as she navigates new challenges, surprises, choices, and acceptance.

This book is more like journal entries that create a theme, or collection, than just a purely seamless presentation. Even though I prefer her previous books, I have read them all, I still enjoyed everything she brought to the table.

WE get to follow along as she comes to terms with life, past choices, reality, aging, imperfections, and learning to appreciate grace, forgiveness, sunshine, and the small things that come our way.

I really enjoyed the privilege of being able to be included in her life.

4/5 stars

Thank you NG and William Morrow | Harper Wave for this wonderful arc and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.

I am posting this review to my GR and Bookbub accounts immediately and will post it to my Amazon, Instagram, and B&N accounts upon publication on 3/10/26.