January book picks: Day 12 of January’s best reads

We’ve tapped Luxury Reading’s book lovin’ blogger, Vera, to give us the scoop all month long on what books are worth the read. She’ll be dishing out daily book picks — and here’s pick twelve.

When Alice Cohen tried to conceive with her then husband, doctor after doctor told her that she was infertile. At age 44, Alice began experiencing a strange array of symptoms that her doctors could not explain. One told her that her bloated abdomen was due to a middle-age loss of muscle, another suggested she was menopausal. Six months later when she was desperate for any diagnosis including cancer, Alice found out that she was actually pregnant.

What I Thought I Knew is Alice Cohen’s brutally honest, no holds barred account of her experience with an unexpected high-risk pregnancy. A slim book that can (and was) finished in one sitting, What I Thought I Knew had me alternating between laughter and horror at the graphic descriptions of Alice’s labor. Keep in mind, I’ve never gone through labor myself! I loved the feeling of intimacy that Alice created for me as a reader and the fact that she spared no details, even if those details cast her in a less than flattering light.