DEAR MOLLY

In this memoir, a former U.S. Marine uses his emotional connection to the music of Swedish singer Molly Sandén to offer musings on his own life.

In 2021, Nitki’s Dad (a pseudonym that refers to the author’s pet dog, Nitki) sent a letter to Sandén, which he reprints in this book in full. “Her music renewed a spirit within me,” he notes to the reader, and he uses this letter as “a road map…to write my own story.” The author then offers discussions of Sandén’s songs, including her performance of “Húsavík (My Hometown),” the Oscar-nominated song from the Netflix film Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga(2020).The bulk of the narrative, however, is structured around events that the author personally experienced in 2021, including unspecified contractjobs for various companies, including one in the financial sector, and interactions with passengers during his stintsas an Uber driver. He also references other biographical details, including previous challenging relationships also covered in the memoir The Warrior Within(2022), which this author was developing around the same time as this one. There’s philosophical commentary throughout the book, with chapter headings as “Helping Other People Evolve” and “Liking Ourselves Validates Energy” reflecting this interest. “I’m not infatuated or delusional, certainly not a stalker or an obsessed fan” of Sandén, the author writes; however, some readers may find a dream sequence in which the singer visits him in Charlotte, North Carolina, to be somewhat disturbing. Still, the book does conclude on a rather touching and hopeful note, with the author “looking forward to breathing in and living each moment, to pack as much light and love into my heart as humanly possible and feel what real love is.”

An earnest, if uneven, stream-of-consciousness account with philosophical elements.