The Only Thing There Is to Want: A Memoir of Three Loves

by Sarah Hepola

The New York Times bestselling author of Blackout excavates the romantic entanglements that defined her adulthood—an electrifying and unflinching account of the ways we choose love, it chooses us, and how those choices build a life.

“I’m scared I only want what I can’t have,” I said.
“Oh baby,” he said. “It’s the only thing there is to want.”

Sarah Hepola wanted so a big career; travel and adventure; deep relationships; passion. Having realized so many of those desires, she also grieved the ways her life was not what she’d always imagined it would be. Did I want too much, she wondered. Did I make the wrong choices? Love the wrong people?

In The Only Thing There Is To Want, Hepola revisits three complicated love affairs from her past, seeking to understand how they might have kept her from the life she’d envisioned, but also made her who she is. Examining her own decisions, Hepola probes the Is love ever really a choice?

This dazzling portrait of the mirages of modern romance captures the paradox of wanting propels us forward and holds us back. Funny, achingly tender, and fearlessly intimate, The Only Thing There Is to Want is about discovering the beauty in the life you’ve built.

297 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 29, 2026

About the author

Sarah Hepola is the personal essays editor at Salon.com, where she reads people’s secrets for a living. She has written many stories about drinking and eating too much. Her essays on culture have appeared in the New York Times magazine, The New Republic, Glamour, The Guardian, Nerve, Slate, and The Morning News, where she has been a contributing writer for more than a decade. Her past jobs include: Travel columnist, music editor, film critic, sex blogger, and for about 15 seconds in the late ’90s, she taught high school English. She lives in East Dallas, where she enjoys playing her guitar poorly and listening to the “Xanadu” soundtrack.

Her memoir, “Blackout,” will be published by Grand Central on June 23, 2015. It was recently named one of the most anticipated upcoming memoirs by Publishers Weekly. You can contact her at sarahhepola@gmail.com. (Please send Salon story submissions to shepola@salon.com).