"In Better, Arianna Rebolini writes with awe-inducing clarity, emotional honesty, and intellectual rigor, taking on the immense complexity of suicide and the profound questions it raises. With piercing and deeply personal insight, she reframes the experience of motherhood, exploring how the specter of suicide can shape and fracture a mother’s sense of self. There are readers for whom this may become the most important book they ever read." —Chloé Cooper Jones, author of Easy Beauty: A Memoir

"Arianna Rebolini’s Better is unlike any memoir I’ve ever read. It’s part cultural commentary, part research, part confessional. Above all, it’s brutally candid and features page-turning anecdotes about her own late-night, early-morning, mid-day episodes of staggering despair. It’s also a strangely and beautifully optimistic reverie on coming clean about our darkest and most intimate struggles while slowly coming to terms with the idea that we might possibly be worthy of love, help, and…life.” —Hannah Pittard, author of We Are Too Many

"Better is an essential memoir. Part literary analysis of suicidality, part life analysis, Rebolini offers an incisive and necessary look into life of managing mental illness. The writing is intimate, revealing, and destigmatizing in a way that has long been necessary and too often avoided. The result is no simple memoir. Beautiful, propulsive and revealing, Rebolini's approach to her subject is transformative. Better is an act of service to those who have not yet felt seen or considered in discussions around mental health and suicidality. It’s a rare book that serves both as a relief and a rallying cry." —Erika Swyler, author of We Lived on the Horizon

"Better is a beautifully lucid and generous exploration of suicidality, deftly zooming in on intimate moments within the author's life, and out to the systemic failures that decimate communities and leave us all at risk. Rebolini interrogates the linear notion of 'getting better,' courageously asking how we might learn to live with the entirety of ourselves, including mental illness and suicide—while treating these painful topics with incredible sensitivity and curiosity. This is a deeply timely and tender book." —Lydia Kiesling, author of Mobility

"[Better] is both an act of defiant self-expression—an insistence on vulnerability over shame—and an academic exploration that asks seriously: 'What is making us want to die?'" —Chicago Review of Books

"A brave narrative of radical empathy both for oneself and for others confronting the darkest darkness." —Kirkus Reviews (Full review)

"Rather than focus solely on the role of mental health in suicide, Rebolini questions the impact of predatory capitalism on the ability to live a good life. How might a country that strips its citizens of health care, employment, and housing play a role in wanting to die? What responsibility should society have in making life better for its most marginalized people? Better offers an insightful, vital portrait of suicide that makes no attempt to euphemize or diminish its subject." —Vulture (Best Books of 2025)

"For any reader, Better can provide insight into the depressed and suicidal person’s thinking. With depression and suicidality rampant in America, we need this book. We should prioritize continuing to open the conversation about mental health, normalizing depression as an ailment that requires treatment, and parents with depression and suicidality need validation that we can still do a good job in our parenting. This book is a fantastic place to start." —Good River Review (Full review.)