It meant a lot to me to receive this ARC because I have loved the works of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton since high school. I thought this book would explore their personal relationship more, but the book mostly parallels their experiences separately. The author did her thorough research, and there is so much information about these authors divulged. I think that anything you've ever wanted to know about Plath and Sexton is written about within these pages. I have always been interested in these authors, and I learned more about them from this book than any other work. I highly recommend this book if you are interested in poetry, Plath or Sexton.

Book Review for Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz by Gail Crowther
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What a fascinating book! I began reading knowing very little about Sexton or Plath, and finished with an appreciation for how complex and talented both women were. I had no idea how many parallels their lives had.

In my opinion, every female creative should read this book. It's more than a biography, it's a lesson in how difficult it was for women to balance a writing career with marriage and motherhood. You'll come to appreciate what an incredible achievement it was for both women to with Pulitzers at a time when female poet weren't respected or supported. What's more, so much of what they faced, from industry support to mental health treatment, continues in some form today.

I truly loved reading this story, and learned a lot.

A solid, intriguing biography that is more like a dual biography than it is about their friendship (which covers two or so out of eight chapters and an epilogue). I like how we get to dive into their parallel lives and how the culture and their mental illnesses affected them and their writing. There’s definitely a lot I didn’t know about Anne Sexton and her sexual abuse of her daughter, but it’s covered with the full consent of the daughter it happened to. Definitely a hell of a read, and something you might want to pick up when it comes out.

This book was very well researched and was really so interesting. I found the way that the author, Gail Crowther compared and contrasted the two poets so seamless and unbiased. That must have been difficult to accomplish. It was heart-wrenching at times but it gave the reader a very big window into Sylvia Plath‘s, and Anne Sexton’s troubled and gifted lives.