The Secret Currency of Love: The Unabashed Truth about Women, Money, and Relationships

I love this book. It provides for hours of reading. I have never come across one like this. It is applicable to women of every age and social strata and most of all, it has international appeal becuase the essays are so personal. Women can identify with the choices made and lessons learnt through out each essay. I am happy I got it and it will be among those books on my shelf that will not be loaned out. Great read.

I have fully enjoyed reading this book. It is a wonderful collection of stories, some hilarious, some sad, some exciting, all fascinating, written by women that all revolve around love and money. They are extremely personal accounts of each writer's own experiences. The heartfelt sharing of these stories allows the reader to feel in some ways a sense of normalcy about their own feelings and experiences with love and money, as well as a sense of gratitude towards the writer for sharing so freely and intimately about their failings and accomplishments, leaving the reader all the wiser, learning from their experiences. I highly recommend this book - an excellent read!

Like to real about real people? These essays cover the life choices of real women from all walks of life, from the very bottom through the very elite of our society. I was so impressed by their life stories that I bought a copy for my daughter. She is very busy, but this book is worth her time!

Money and relationships often get tangled in a negative spiral, but Hilary Black has untangled them and offered us essays by women who divulge their experiences. One of the most striking essays is "Severance" by Jennifer Wolff Perrine, who bought a baby from a family who did not have the resources or energy to raise a third child. The interaction between these two families, the emotions involved in the giving and taking of a child and the honesty both sets of parents expressed showed that although money was part of the transaction, the relationship that developed between the two sets of parents provided the strength to make it a success. Another essay contrasts raising children on a tight budget with sending them to school with affluent kids. In "The Price of Admission" Leslie Bennetts shows how her two children, enrolled in an elite private school, learned to negotiate a life of austerity while associating with the wealthy. Their daughter spent summer vacation in France with her friend, and her son accepted not having a cell phone while his friends repeatedly lost their phones and got new ones. At a parent discussion meeting, when Bennetts mentioned that her children worked to earn an allowance, "[t]heir disdain made me feel like the proverbial skunk at the garden party..." Although many of the essays centered on women who had enough or excess money, the different lifestyles pictured here created variety and interest. Excellent writing made this book even more of a pleasure to read. by Susan M. Andrus for Story Circle Book Reviews reviewing books by, for, and about women

Some anthologies are like the CDs we used to buy before iTunes took over. Think: one or two great cuts, and then a bunch of filler that sound as if the artist dug them out of a drawer because the record company insisted on another album, Pronto! Many have argued such buyer-beware experiences have led the music industry into the death spiral it's in now. Given that, I approach anthologies with caution. Are they flogging one big-name writer? Is the one great essay going to appear in the NYTimes Sunday Styles' Modern Love column anyway? Why buy it? But this one is different. It's good, through and through. Revealing. Honest. Yes, to address some of the other reviewers' nitpicks, several of the women are women of privilege (But come on: When an editor goes looking for essays about love and money, can it be any surprise that writers with money are among her contributors?). But the best essays don't whine. They admit the tangles we all face when it comes to class and romance. I couldn't believe how open some of these writers were -- Laurie Abraham's essay about her willful financial ignorance comes to mind. Jennifer Wolff Perrine's essay "Severance," about adopting a baby from a lower middle class couple that just couldn't afford a third child, is truly breathtaking. This anthology renewed my belief in the form. It hits its topics from many angles, some of them surprising. I'd recommend it highly.