Oh Love, Come Close: A Memoir

Written by Lindsay Frazier
Dexterity (January 30, 2023)
Paperback, 240 pages

Reviewed by Amy Rivers

An image of the book cover, Oh Love, Come Close.Oh Love, Come Close is a deeply personal reflection on one woman’s journey to confront her chronic depression and its underlying causes. 

According to the publisher, Oh Love, Come Close explores the emotional wounds that fragmented a woman’s identity and retraces  the steps needed to pick up the pieces left behind―her sexuality, spirituality, fidelity, and a complicated past. Frazier unearths her buried wounds and finds that to fully live, to fully love and be loved, she has to reclaim all the pieces of herself, no matter how painful that might be.

Reading and reviewing a memoir is like navigating a minefield. Frazier’s raw and unapologetic retelling of her struggles with marriage, sexual identity, past spiritual trauma, and mental illness are both profoundly moving and disturbing. Her experiences as a woman and as a mother resonated with me, but I also found her outbursts and ambivalence exasperating. And maybe that is the point–to take this walk beside her, experiencing the highs and lows that characterized her life. 

The interactions Frazier had with her therapist include incredible and heart wrenching revelations about a variety of traumatic experiences that speak to not only personal emotional hurt but also the ripple effect of violence in families, communities, and society as a whole. 

And while the memoir presents some important questions about topics ranging from faith to mental and emotional well-being, Frazier’s struggle to understand her situation sometimes opens Pandora’s box without closing the lid. For example, and I think this point is particularly noteworthy, Frazier is honest about her conflicts with her own sexuality, speaking openly about her attraction to and previous relationships with other women, but this aspect of her struggle is glossed over in terms of resolution. Marriage becomes a tool through which Frazier attempts to change or erase those feelings, and the result is a disaster for both herself and her husband. 

Though I commend Frazier for all the hard work she did to process her trauma and to find a way to cope with her depression, her book raises a question about a conservative Christian view of sexuality and the LGBTQ community, especially pertaining to her own feelings on the topic, that is left startlingly unresolved.  Based on her upbringing, she grapples with the idea that “homosexuality” is wrong, but does so only in passing, leaving the issue unsettled in her own mind. For this reason, I would remind any reader struggling with their own sexuality, especially within the structure of Christian faith, that this story is a reflection of the author’s journey and experience only, not a moral primer for all.


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Amy Rivers is the author of the award-winning novel All The Broken People and the A Legacy of Silence series. Amy holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science, an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies with focuses in Psychology and Political Science, and graduate certificates in Forensic Criminology and Victim Advocacy. As a former director for a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners program in Southern New Mexico, she has a passion for community violence prevention efforts. She currently writes full-time and is the Director of Writing Heights Writers Association. Amy was raised in New Mexico and now lives in Colorado with her husband and children. Learn more on her website.

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