Strangers - Belle Burden

Strangers

By Belle Burden

  • Release Date: 2026-01-13
  • Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 396 Ratings
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Description

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Burden’s searing, probing memoir explores . . . what she learned about intimacy and her own spirit.”—People​​

“A beautifully written instant classic. Strangers is gripping and heartbreaking and a must-read for every wife—and husband.”—Graydon Carter

“Asks us to examine life’s most perplexing questions: Can we see the invisible fault lines in a marriage or truly know the people closest to us?”—Lori Gottlieb
It was a great love story, one for the ages. The speed of our beginning and the speed of our ending felt like matching bookends. They both came out of nowhere. He wanted it, he wanted me. And then he didn’t.

In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha’s Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together—building fires in the late afternoons, drinking whisky sours, making roast chicken. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of twenty years announced that he was leaving her. Overnight, her caring, steady partner became a man she hardly recognized. He exited his life with her like an actor shrugging off a costume.

In Strangers, Burden revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal. Through all of it, she is transformed. The discreet, compliant woman she once was—someone nicknamed “Belle the Good”—gives way to someone braver, someone determined to use her voice.

With unflinching honesty and profound grace, Burden charts a path through heartbreak to show the power of a woman who refuses to give up on love. Strangers is a stunning, deeply moving, compulsively readable memoir heralding the arrival of a thrilling new literary talent.

Reviews

  • Strangers

    5
    By Pepino53jh
    I usually do not read memoirs, but this one caught my eye. I read it in one morning, it grips you and never lets you go.

  • Beautiful

    5
    By michiV95
    This book is graceful. The author goes into detail about what happened to her and her families history. I read this book so fast because it was interesting and wanting to know what happened next.

  • Beautiful

    5
    By MorganElyseJobe
    I loved reading this. So beautiful, vivid, and honestly written.

  • Strangers

    5
    By Traveler Children
    I enjoy a good memoir. Strangers was especially interesting to me because it told me what it would be like to be very wealthy. The lifestyle of rich, highly accomplished people. In this story friends and socialization are at the center, along with family life. We read about the ways one defining event can fundamentally change a person. I believe if you can just hang on,and never give up,something good is waiting for you in your future.

  • Not to my liking

    1
    By Amigo73
    I didn’t see the point. I thought it was depressing.

  • Thank you Belle

    5
    By pinkyjk03
    Thank you Belle for being brave and writing your story. I too had something very similar happen and I’m not brave enough to write about it ! I’m still afraid I will lose what little I have been given. Men hold all the power when one chooses to be a stay at home Mother. Men stick together and women will talk about you behind your back about why he left. The part of your husband that is so telling about who he is … what a selfish selfish man for not wanting shared custody, vacations, weekend sleep overs with his children. He’s so narcissistic he doesn’t see the impact of that decision on his children , what a terrible thing for them ! I don’t understand why any woman in his future would want to be with him - good luck to them if they do, they will need it!

  • Beautifully written

    5
    By NiniMVY
    The prose in this memoir is airtight. Well done, Belle. I read it in a few days without putting it down and it’s not a subject that usually appeals to me. Good luck in the rest of your writing and your personal life. If you write more, I’ll be reading it.

  • A Personal Story for the Privileged and Wealthy, Not Universally Relatable

    1
    By Savannahreader40
    This memoir is clearly written from a place of genuine heartbreak, and the author’s pain is real. However, I found the narrative often treats that heartbreak as though it should feel universally catastrophic, without fully situating the extraordinary safety net surrounding her life. When privilege is so central to the context of the story, its lack of reflection becomes noticeable. I found the tone dry and hard to relate…she writes about her devastation however the writing frequently reads more like an attorney’s brief than a work of introspection. Events are presented with certainty and grievance rather than curiosity or self-examination, which creates emotional distance. Memoirs tend to resonate most when they grapple with ambiguity, complicity, and perspective; here, the absence of sustained reckoning makes the suffering feel oddly abstract. While the loss of a marriage is undeniably painful, I should know, the memoir sometimes feels tone-deaf, not because the pain isn’t sincere, but because it is rarely examined alongside the material and structural protections that cushion it. Readers who have faced loss with fewer economical buffers may find it difficult to fully engage. Ultimately, Belle Burden may resonate most with readers who share the author’s world. For others, the lack of self-awareness around privilege limits the empathy the book seems to ask for rather than earn.

  • Great

    5
    By zamasha25
    Thank you for writing this book

  • Strangers

    5
    By Amy Robach
    A story of love, betrayal and then redemption. I hope Belle is really proud of herself in telling her story. I hope James her ex husband is ashamed of himself for no other reason than, he should be.

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