All We Knew But Couldn't Say is unputdownable and gut wrenching at the same time.
Mrs. Vannicola talks about about growing up and maturing in some of the most horrific circumstances. When she talks about the abuse she endured it isn't easy to read, not with how well she encapsulates it. But I can't help but admire her bravery in sharing it all, especially with how poised this book is.
It's beautifully written. It's raw and emotional. It's powerful throughout.
It's an important book.

It seems odd to say that you enjoyed a book like this because of the content, but this book was incredible! It almost felt as if the story were fiction, how can one person possibly endure all of what Joanne did throughout her childhood and still come out fighting? I'm in awe of how well the story was told, but what continues to sit with me after finishing the book is that no matter what the circumstances, Joanne and all of her siblings were by their mother's side when she was sick. The mere act of being there speaks volumes and truly causes you to reflect on your own life and realize that it is possible to forgive someone and appreciate what good they did do, as well as empathize with what they've been through. This reminded me of The Glass Castle and Educated, in that all of these women endured a great deal when they were young and still managed to forgive and come out of it successfully. This was truly a work of art!

Joanne Vannicola's heart-wrenching memoir is bound to make you uncomfortable, sad, and angry, and it will find its way into your thoughts at random moments of the day.

Vannicola's childhood was far from normal. Between the topics of child abuse (including sexual abuse), violence, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and suicide, this certainly was a depressing read. If you're very sensitive, you may want to wait until you can handle the subject matter. Nonetheless, it's an important book and I think anyone could get something out of it.

Most importantly, this book is about recovery from all of those horrific events and circumstances. Vannicola is a successful actress and a champion for LGBTQ+ rights. She's respected. She's strong. Her story shows that there is still hope in dismal odds.

Keep in mind this is a memoir from an actress, not an author. It's true there are some odd quirks in the writing, but don't let that subtract from the story. It's really a three-and-a-half star book, but rounded up to four stars.

Thank you to Janne Vannicola, Dundurn, and NetGalley for allowing me access to an eARC to review. As always, all opinions are my own.

This is a sad gutwrenching story, but it is also one of strength and survival. It was hard reading about what happened to the author as a child, it was horrible. However the author overcomes her abuse and uses her experiances to help others.

I would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

Everyone needs to read this book!

I read so many books that, while they're usually really good books, I'm on to the next one without a lot of thought to the last one. This book is not one of those books that I will soon forget. Even though I may read several other books in the coming days and weeks, the thoughts this book evokes will stay with me.

One of the lines in this book is, "It's possible to love the broken". Vannicola was such a broken woman who came from a totally broken family, and how she persevered and continued to love others is a miracle. Her father was physically and horribly abusive to her and her sisters, and her mother had no sexual boundaries. As a young child Vannicola was subjected to so much abuse, both physical and sexual that her psychological health is a miracle today. Remarkable is the fact that even through her pain and the manifestations of that pain, her wish to help others was front and center. Her wish to do that has remained and grown throughout the years.

Near the end of the book, we learn how her mother became such a broken woman, and how she continued that brokenness down to her children.

Vannicola is now an actor, activist, writer and artist whose main thrust seems to be the betterment of the LGBT+ community, and she has done much work in educating people on HIV/AIDS. I so admire what Ms. Vannicola has done in her life. Thank you for this gift, Joanne Vannicola!

Thank you to Dundum and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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Trigger warning: contains graphic descriptions of eating disorders, sexual abuse, violence and suicide.
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This book recounts the horrific childhood and young adulthood of the author and her siblings. They were raised in a family where neither parent nurtured or nourished their children. Instead, violence, abuse and inexplicable events (from the point of view of children) shape their lives.

This was a very hard book to read, but I do feel it is important that the author shares her story. I feel that the telling breaks the power and the hold that familial history held over the author, and it may have been cathartic for her to look back. I hope this book is a step toward making peace with a personal history over which she had no control.

A gut-wrenching memoir that leaves nothing unspoken.

Trigger warning: contains graphic descriptions of eating disorders, sexual abuse, violence and suicide.

I love memoir and the untethered bravery of those who choose to take on this genre. I love that emotional tug, that contradictory feeling of reading about someone’s life, a life that is so horrendous and filled with unprecedented pain, all while holding in mind, almost in disbelief, that those events really happened to an actual person.

And so was my experience with this book. To give you a glimpse into just one of the themes in the book, Vannicola writes: “The idea of mother was sacred to many, or at least the illusion of it. Paedophilia was not the first thing that came to mind for most when thinking about mothers.”

I was gripped as the story unfolded and delved into other themes such as the anguish and destructive nature of Vannicola’s eating disorder. Her intense and consuming obsession with suicide. Jarring violence at the hands of her brutal father, her own sexual identity and the many losses she incurred, including the forced removal or eviction of her own beloved siblings. It was hard to believe that all of this was happening to a child/ adolescent. And all this while she shone as a child performer and, later, Emmy Award-winning actress.
But happen it did, and 15 years after her involuntary estrangement from her mother, she feels compelled to be at the bedside of the dying woman. She grapples with her conflicting feelings as the plasters are ripped from all of her wounds, yet she is there out of a misplaced sense of obligation, for closure, for answers. She lives in the hope that her mother will hand her the key to unlock Pandora's Box of all of the unexplained and inexplicable events in her young life.

The writer moves seamlessly between the chapters about the past and chapters at the hospital and the story flows effortlessly. I did find the journey through her eating disorder heart-breaking but also found it odd that her recovery - from one of the most difficult addictions to break - seemed so quick and effortless.

While Vannicola is an accomplished actress, activist and woman in her own right, writing may not be her strongest skill. There was a lack of elegance in her prose and, in certain parts, the language was somewhat concrete. I expect Vannicola felt compelled to write her truth and birthing a book with so many searing recollections cannot be expected to be a smooth experience. The epilogue felt more like a list of acknowledgements, and the ending left me wanting to know more about what dramatically emerges in the last section of the book.

The nature of the content left me feeling somewhat shaken and traumatized myself as her descriptions of violations by others and her own self-defeating behaviours were vivid and visceral, and lingered long after the pages were turned. I had to put the book down a few times just to process what I had read.

If you are brave, as Vannicola is, and want to read a remarkable account of survival, the damaging dynamics of true dysfunction and how 'hurt people hurt people', then please read this book. It is by no means an easy read, but it is an essential piece of writing. In the author’s words: “It is possible to love the broken.”


Desiree-Anne Martin


Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

Joanne Vannicola is an award winning actress and activist; her autobiography bravely addresses trauma and abuse she survived at home growing up in Canada. As a child Joanne was very involved in dance and theater, but other than these organized activities her life, and that of her three older siblings, was violent chaos. Not only did she survive her brutal father, her sadistic mother, the disappearance of her oldest sister, alcohol and drugs, mental illness and anorexia, incredibly she thrived, found the will to forgive and ultimately found peace.

I'm very glad that Vannicola was able to recover from her frightening death-defying experience with anorexia, her description of that phase of her life was harrowing. I took issue with a subsequent line, "It didn't take long for the pounds to return, for the muscles, bones, and organs to rebound" which sounded a bit dismissive to me.

Joanne Vannicola's book is truly heart wrenching. She survived years of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse at the hands of her own parents. Around age 14, Joanne is already a working actress and her mom pressures her into leaving home under the guise that it's for her career. Joanne is on her own. She cuts her mom out of her life and she spends years dealing with her own mental un-wellness, barely surviving. She eventually does the hard work of trying to heal herself. Fifteen years later she finds out her mom has terminal cancer and she decides to face her one last time, hoping for some answers about what happened in their shared past.

Vannicola is a gifted storyteller and this book is a well-written, honest and engrossing memoir about her life and how it led her to become an activist for abuse survivors and a voice for the LGBTQ+ community. It's extremely difficult to read about the abuse she suffered, especially because you can easily forget just how young she was when she was dealing with some of the most horrible things in the world. (Trigger warning for homophobia, violence against kids, sexual abuse, and eating disorders.)

I would have given it 5 stars but the ending was a bit rushed. I wanted a little more about what she's doing now and how she's doing now. I wanted a brief synopsis of where she is now, literally and figuratively, Also, she found out some heavy things about her mom and didn't fully explain I want to know if she dug deeper to see if the information was true and if so, how did it affect her and her siblings. I think we needed 1 or 2 more chapters!

I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
Thanks NetGalley!

Joanne grew up in a home with no sexual boundaries and a physically abusive father. She was pressured to leave at home 14... and after 15 years of being gone, she learns her mother is dying. she makes the decision to try to connect with her and learns some secrets.'

I found myself easily relating to Joanne in terms of our childhood/upbringing. This book will be difficult for many to read as it does touch upon on abuse, pedophilia, violence, anorexia and more.

This book was very hard for me to read, but at the same time I found it cathartic, inspiring, and an absolutely important read. As a survivor of generational trauma and abuse and intent on breaking the cycle once and for all, there were areas where I completely related to Joanne Vannicola’s childhood, her thought processes, her actions and reactions.

There are descriptions of violence, child abuse, anorexia, and pedophilia that may be difficult to read for many people.

Joanne Vannicola is a Canadian actress and activist who has starred in movies and TV series since she was a child. Her activism is also quite extensive, having fought for civil, women’s, and LGBTQ+ rights for many years now. Her memoir All We Knew But Couldn’t Say is a must read in my opinion: honest, stark, and inspiring.

Joanne’s father was extremely violent and abusive towards his four kids (mainly his three daughters Sadie, Lou and Joanne, the only son, Diego, was mostly spared). But her mother was too, taking pleasure in watching her children get beaten up, and also turning towards sexual abuse with Joanne. Pushed out of her mother’s home at the age of 14, Joanne is left to find her own way in the world, navigate life as an actress, as a lesbian, as a woman, while she is still a child. She finally cuts all ties with her mother until she receives a phone call 15 years later telling her that her mother is dying. (This is a very bare bones summary of the book, the memoir itself is much deeper; dark but also bright, and beautifully written).

There are so many talking points in this book: the incredibly damaging effects of child abuse, the reasons why so many children remain silent way into adulthood, the way so many people turn a blind eye, the different ways we react to trauma, the deeply entrenched roots of white male supremacy in our world, the bigotry in the film and TV industry and beyond, the difficulties of talking about topics that make people uncomfortable, the rarely discussed abuse by mothers, and survival. Joanne Vannicola is so very brave and so very amazing.

Thanks to Netgalley and Dundurn for providing me with an advance copy of this important memoir.

I thoroughly recommend this memoir.

It feels wrong to say I enjoyed reading about the struggles Joanne Vannicola faced growing up. It was impossible not to feel her pain and want to save that little girl.

But Joanne has written a very measured account of her life and although it was too difficult for her to describe in detail all she endured, we were able to still appreciate the horrors she faced and travel the road with her.

Joanne Vannicola is an exceptionally strong willed and principled young woman. This hasn't always been helpful but has shaped her life as she tried to escape a traumatic past and make her future one of hope and positive experiences.

The idea that a mother could be as abusive as a father in a dysfunctional family wasn't readily accepted when the Vannicola siblings were small. There was also far less understanding of how the resulting psychological scars would be deep enough to effect a lifetime of relationships with yourself and others. This book opened up about things we now have some knowledge of but the most important aspects to me were how, with help and self-belief, you can be true to yourself, and be comfortable with who you are but it is a lifelong journey.

The author wasn't known to me as an actor but that was of little importance, what really struck a chord was how she was treated by acting coaches, agents, and directors as well as her mother to further their own careers or reputations. How words spoken when she was small stuck with her, leading to dark, destructive places she fought for many years to escape.

I was able to read an advanced copy of this book thanks to NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an unbiased review and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys autobiographical writing with a strong voice. Despite the destructive influences of Joanne Vannicola's parents and the toxicity of her working environment it was positive reading experience.

Forgiveness? Is that even possible when a person goes through the hideous acts put upon Joanne and her siblings. This is an emotional read that is like watching a train wreak unfold. You know something really bad is going to happen but you cannot turn away, but you may close your eyes every now and then to regroup. I had to put the read down every now and then to process and reflect upon what I had just read. Parenting is tough stuff and in this case, I wish these parents had a manual for what to do and definitely for what not to do. I shake my head in astonishment that Joanne and her siblings could walk into that hospital room. Forgiveness? This is also a read about growing up, working in the film industry, coming to an unacceptable realization of the movie/television business, and realizing/embracing your sexuality. What is most awesome is Joanne's desire and drive to make a difference in the lives of others; especially girls and women.

I'm embarrassed to say that prior to reading this, I had no idea who Joanna Vannicola was and was instead intrigued by the synopsis. Suffice to say having read her fascinating and well-written memoir, I'm incredibly impressed by this woman and inspired by what she lived through and who she became.

*** WARNING - TRIGGER WARNING***

This book contains scenes of child sexual abuse and physical abuse of children. If any of these topics cause emotional triggers for you, I strongly suggest you do not read this book.
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There are many memoirs that contain disturbing subject matter and ALL WE KNEW BUT COULDN'T SAY is no exception. However, the difference between other memoirs and that of Canadian Joanne Vannicola is that Joanne somehow managed to live through her horrific childhood and yet still emerge into adulthood full of compassion for others. Rather than allow her abusers to keep her 'small,' she has gone on to have a phenomenal career. To my way of thinking, Joanne being happy and successful is the best revenge. Her strength and determination are a big "F" you to her abusers. She didn't let them win.

Not only that, but she has also become an advocate for LGBTQ youth. According to Joanne, "[Her] role meant [Joanne] could impact their lives, provide a little hope for others even though [she] still hadn't learned to hold on to it [herself]...and it provided a deeper purpose..."

Joanne says in the book:
"I could not erase my own pain, but if I could help other kids, it meant healing was possible."

This memoir is powerful. It is horrific in parts, especially when readers learn how Joanne was treated as a child, but it also includes some wonderful and touching moments and shows the power of friendship.

I do not want to give away too much with my review because I am hoping that everyone who reads this review runs out to buy/pre-order a copy of ALL WE KNEW BUT COULDN'T SAY.

YES, this book will make you shake in anger at the people who were supposed to love Joanne the most, but who turned out to be the perpetrators of her abuse, BUT I BELIEVE THIS IS A BOOK THAT NEEDS TO BE READ.

There are children suffering at this very moment, and people who see these things happening are often afraid to call Children's Aid in case they are wrong. BUT ... What if a child dies or suffers irreparable harm because you did not make that simple phone call? How would you feel? Could you ever forgive yourself?

PLEASE MAKE THE CALL. If it is determined that there was no abuse, then you can rest easy knowing you did the right thing. A bit of embarrassment is nothing when a child's life and/or his/hers mental health.

This book is not only about abuse. It is also about growing up and trying to come to terms with your sexuality. Joanne came of age not too long ago, but it was long ago enough that being gay, bisexual, trans, or queer was not acceptable to society at large. In fact, the phrase "non-binary" did not even exist. People kept their sexual orientations quiet and this fact made Joanne question what exactly was "wrong" with her. This memoir follows her journey from questioning her sexuality to accepting it and to become an advocate and role model for other LGBTQ youth.

Joanne's life has been full of pain and agony, but it has also been a life filled with many triumphs, including her winning the her battle with anorexia.

I could go on and on about how amazing Joanne Vannicola is (all based on her book as I have not met her yet.) Instead, I will encourage everyone reading this review to pre-order her book immediately. Don't wait to do it. Order it immediately. You will not be disappointed. ALL WE KNEW BUT COULDN'T SAY is a 5+ Star Book and you will continue to think about Joanne and her life long after the final page has been read. It is impossible not to. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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A heart wrenching book a book that is so raw acts done to the children horrific .A very important look at what can go on behind closed doors and congratulations to the author a true survivor. #netgalley #dundrenbooks.

The author, an award winning actor, activist, and writer, hides nothing and most importantly is honest with herself as she relates her real life story in raw, lyrical detail.

It’s a book telling of abusive parents, of being a professional actor since she was 8 years old, of brutal battles with anorexia, drugs, and alcohol before the age of 15.

It’s very difficult to read early on because you’re thinking, she’s 5, 8, then 11 years old, a child who is experiencing heinous acts, physical and sexual abuse, attacks on her psyche by the people in charge of her, parents, teachers. Her friends are in no better shape, skinny, gay kids like herself making it on the streets by any means or being shamelessly exploited by adults in the industry or who are in other roles of authority.

Then we follow her to Toronto at 14 years old, living on her own, still working as a professional actor, not even knowing simple adult things like cooking or even being able to afford a meal, doing laundry, or buying shoes because, again, she’s an exiled child with an already bitter and scarred disposition and no practical life experience. We wait for the bottom so that we can watch her make her way up. The author is alive to tell the story so we know there’s salvation in the end. No heroes come to her rescue. It’s the author’s own strength that not only
saves her but also gives her the insight to help others to climb out of the same type of “wreckage.”

If you can bear it, this is a hell of a read.

A really beautiful memoir. A very heart wrenching story but it was very well written. It was a difficult subject to read but again very well told so I could get through it. I went through a plethora of emotions, to sad, shocked, angry and finally admitiration for Joanna.

All We Knew But Couldn't Say is a gut wrenching looking into the life of, Emmy Award winner , Joanne Vannicola. .

As she gets news of her mothers pending death she is forced to look back on her life and relive childhood traumas . From physical, sexual and emotional abuse at the hands of her parents to struggles with anorexia and drugs all the while trying to discover her own identity.

A memoir filled with real demons, heartbreaking truths and finding oneself in the midst of all the madness.