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Mia Hayes and her husband, James, had a happy marriage and idyllic life with their three boys in a flat in a house in San Francisco where his family had lived for five generations; his parents lived in a flat on a lower floor. Mia “was a whirlwind” in trying out new projects regularly, and James “was the calm hand that steadied the ship.”
Then on a rainy November day, he headed off to work on his Vespa while Mia waited for an editor to call about the manuscript she had written. And their lives changed drastically not long afterward: James was hit by a truck and trapped under it. Miraculously, his injuries were minor initially, considering the severity of the accident. But his personality changed; James became angry and withdrawn, and many of his memories of their life together were gone. Mia did everything she could to help him, to love him, to bring him back to her, to their family. Then he had an affair. The combination of events led her to experience her own serious breakdown.
I went into this book thinking it was primarily about a couple dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic brain injury, so I was taken aback by what I can mostly describe as a memoir of utter chaos. James’ accident started a yearslong unraveling — of the couple’s formerly solid and happy relationship, of James’ and Mia’s personalities and mental health, of their family. The story is raw and unfiltered, and reading it feels like driving slowly by a miles-long accident of epic proportions. On one hand, it felt as if some of it could have been avoided or mitigated if they had gotten proper help initially or at least a lot earlier than they did, but they simply put on a show to the world that everything was fine. They did have support from his parents and her parents, which was vital, as they were able to watch their boys for extended periods of time while Mia went to Paris for weeks on her own, then was joined by James.
I still don’t know why her family call her Bee, and that’s part of the title of the book. Either I missed the brief explanation or she left it out, which seems an obvious fact to include.
Always Yours, Bee is a wide-open window into a couple’s journey through some incredibly difficult experiences and their eventual healing. It’s dark and honest, and that straight-up, leave-out-no-details honesty about infidelity and mental illness could do a lot of good for some people who read it. For me, I likely would have passed on reading it had I realized that it wasn’t just about how a couple dealt with the husband’s brain injury. This was just a lot of major craziness I didn’t see coming and was happy to leave behind when it was over.
Rated: High. There are about 20 instances of strong profanity, 5 uses of moderate profanity, 20 instances of mild language, and 10 uses of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content mostly involves kissing and talking about having sex, including the author mentioning she and her husband had hate/rough sex for a few months, and references to the affairs, but not a lot of detail. Violence includes a scene where the author’s husband shakes her, then she pulls back and falls down the stairs, and a few times she slapped/punched her husband. There’s a lot of alcohol and drug abuse.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
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