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

“Sex & The City meets The Wall Street Journal....Juicy, smart, dramatic and insightful—an addictive read.”
—Beth Kobliner, author of Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties

In The Secret Currency of Love, edited by Hilary Black, acclaimed, bestselling, and award-winning women writers explore the fraught and powerful connections between love and money. As featured on the "Today Show"--with contributions by Karen Karbo, Kathryn Harrison, Lori Gottlieb, Julia Glass, Rebecca Traister, Dani Shapiro, Amy Sohn, and others--The Secret Currency of Love takes an unabashed look at relationships through the often-distorting lens of finance. As Elle magazine informs us, “All the bases are covered here, from the hard lessons women learn (and impart) to the inextricability of romance and cold hard cash.”

Money. It affects us all. So why is it so difficult for us to acknowledge its enormous impact on our private affairs?

In this riveting and provocative anthology of original essays, more than two dozen of America's most esteemed women writers share their deepest feelings about personal finance and how it profoundly influences their relationships with parents, children, spouses, siblings, lovers, and ultimately with themselves. Witty, nuanced, and startlingly intimate, The Secret Currency of Love offers a transformative look at the delicate nature of love and money while providing fascinating insight into how a modern generation of women is defining itself in the new social economy.

Contributors include Leslie Bennetts • Veronica Chambers • Julia Glass • Lori Gottlieb Kathryn Harrison • Sheri Holman • Ann Hood • Karen Karbo • Dani Shapiro • Amy Sohn

“This exceptionally honest and poignant collection deserves a place on the bookshelves of women of all ages, backgrounds, income, net worth levels and walks of life.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review and Pick of the Week)

“Well-written first-person accounts result in an engrossing read throughout. It’s easy to be affected by their experiences, with emotions running the gamut of happy to dismay to sadness at some outcomes.” - New Straits Times (Malaysia)

“A compelling new anthology, The Secret Currency of Love: The Unabashed Truth about Women, Money, and Relationships. In it, a number of prominent female writers (including Julia Glass, Lauri Abraham and Joni Evans) spill the beans about money in their own lives.” - Time magazine

“Introducing the 27 emotionally invested and powerfully introspective essays in THE SECRET CURRENCY OF LOVE. All the bases are covered here, from the hard lessons women learn (and impart) to the inextricability of romance and cold hard cash.” - Elle

“Multiple themes are explored in personal and heartfelt ways: money is success, failure, control, submission, love and hate. Money can mean the chance at motherhood or the ruin of a marriage. In the end, money is everything and nothing.” - Forbes

“Lately it seems like you can’t turn on the TV, have dinner with friends, or even get your nails done without being bombarded with financial news. And frankly, this recession obsession is giving us recession depression. But when we heard about the new book The Secret Currency of Love, a collection of essays about how money affects relationships, our ears perked up. Finally, someone was touching on a fiscal topic we’re interested in. So we asked the book’s editor, Hilary Black, to share what she learned. (Trust us, this is stuff you actually want to know - it could keep your bond from tanking.)” - Cosmopolitan

“The book is so gripping largely because of the quality of the writing. Many of the contributors, from Amy Sohn to Julia Glass to Amy Cohen, are well-known authors. That Black has narrowed down the focus and encouraged such introspection begs the question of readers: What essay would I have written?” - U.S. News & World Report

“Deeply honest and scandalously revealing, THE SECRET CURRENCY OF LOVE offers a mirror into our own complicated feelings about money and relationships—and every woman who reads it will see herself in its pages. You won’t be able to put it down!” - Liz Lange, Founder, Liz Lange Maternity

“Funny, insightful and brutally honest, this book is Sex & The City meets The Wall Street Journal, with a sprinkle of Dostoevsky. Hilary Black has inspired stellar writers to wax poetic (and at times, hilariously pathetic) on the last taboo: money. Juicy, smart, dramatic and insightful—an addictive read.” - Beth Kobliner, author of Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties

“Everyone wants to know their worth, in both love and money — but the lessons lie in the tension between the two. The women who authored this incredible collection of essays dare to get inside that conflict and unpeel the complicated truths that make up our life stories.” - Stacy Morrison, Editor-in-Chief, Redbook Magazine

“The most interesting anthology I’ve seen in years. I read it with fascination, to the very last page.” - Cathi Hanauer, novelist and editor of The Bitch in the House

“A compelling new anthology that offers a fascinating look at how women view money that is, by turns witty, scandalous, poignant and heart-rending.” - San Antonio Express-News