A Sunday Times (London) bestseller. Named a Best Book of 2025 by Vulture , Dazed , and Vogue. "Uncommonly wise and honest. Love in Exile flooded me with a sense of continuity and hope. A masterpiece from start to finish." ―Maggie Nelson, author of Like Love "Should be required reading for anyone who wants to join a dating app, love ethically, or experience true partnership with other humans." ―Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood and The Dry Season A disarmingly wry treatise-cum-memoir on love in a lonely age by a celebrated thinker and columnist for Vogue . Love is supposedly attainable for us all. But for most people, especially women, success with “love”―the yardstick we use to measure our value across romance, parenthood, sex, religion, and friendship―can feel out of reach, an experience frequently ascribed to a personal failing. This sense of unworthiness is, according to Shon Faye, “a form of exile : an intentional, punitive banishment that serves political ends.” Faye, a trans woman in her thirties, has felt isolated from love for as long as she can remember. So after the devastation of her first heartbreak, she figured it was time to find out why. The subsequent investigation, Love in Exile , boldly reframes love’s elusiveness as a collective question. Conversationally frank and intellectually ambitious, these eight voice-driven essays unpack the norms governing love in our time with the insight of a shrewd outsider. Here, Faye examines her breakups with cis men alongside lessons from Lana Del Rey and Alain de Botton, explores the lovelessness that fueled her time as an addict, tackles the relationship between feminine self-worth and motherhood, and finally attempts to discover genuine self-acceptance. The result is a dive into universal, deeply felt questions about love, reframed through a radical, revolutionary perspective. Written with the humor and rigor that made Faye an internationally bestselling writer, Love in Exile is a thrilling reckoning with love in our time. "Faye has an unusual ability to distill complicated, confusing dynamics into their essential components, offering straightforward advice that is never overly simple . . . Faye has a perspective and style that is distinctly her own but offers insight and enlightenment that is appealingly universal." ―Chloe Schama, Vogue " Love in Exile is a graceful, rigorous antidote to the many trials and humiliations of contemporary dating culture . . . Faye is an astute but generous critic of herself and of others; she creates the sort of intimacy that makes reading this book feel like talking to a trustworthy friend. Love in Exile is the millennial answer to bell hooks’s All About Love ." ― Isle McElroy, Vulture " Love in Exile felt like a definitive intervention from the moment it was published . . . Informed by Faye’s own experiences of dating as a trans woman but much larger in scope, Love in Exile offers a far-reaching account of the political and economic forces which have led to romantic love being placed on so high a pedestal, an ever harsher punishment imposed on those who find themselves excluded. Faye is the rare writer who can combine rigorous political analysis with pathos, lyricism and wit. " ―James Greig, Dazed "A clever, funny, and astute look at love―the love that exists between men and women, yes, but also queer love, platonic love, maternal love, religious faith, friendship, and many other forms of love besides . . . Ultimately, the best reason I can give you to read Love in Exile is that in addition to being beautifully written, it is also beautifully, almost unfashionably earnest." ―Philippa Snow, Bookforum "A fascinating assessment of the state of love." ― Emma Alpern, Vulture "A vivid dissection of why we love the way we love―and what it might look like to do it differently." ―Adam Eli, Cultured " Sharp, radical . . . [Faye] turns from poignant reflection on her own loves and losses to argue that her sense of being locked out of love is, actually, symptomatic of late capitalist culture." ―Sarah Jaffe, The American Prospect "This is a memoir but it is also a kind of self-help book. Faye is trying to teach herself–and her reader–how to love in a different way . . . Her writing will shake your illusions about love, but remind you of the value of even attempting it." ―Kitty Drake, The Guardian " Love in Exile is lyrical and often laugh-out-loud funny . . . Shot through with warmth, solidarity and a kind of expansive, sororal love for the world, it’s a bracing and often sad book―but never a depressing one." ―James Greig, DAZED "In Love in Exile , Faye gets candid about her experiences of dating, heartbreak, and addiction, and reflects on how the scripts society writes for us―whether on motherhood, gender roles, or sexiness―influence our feelings of unworthiness and ‘failure’. But she also acknowledges that love isn’t just about romance―in fact, as she