Loni Love’s I TRIED TO CHANGE SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO Debuts on June 23
Loni Love hasn’t taken the typical path to becoming America’s favorite straight-talking girlfriend.
She was not the child of Hollywood legends and she never wore a size 00. Rather, Loni grew up in housing projects in Detroit, more worried about how to afford her next meal rather than going on a diet. When she moved to Hollywood after college to break out in the entertainment world, there was nothing that could convince her to eat kale salads and quinoa bowls, which looked like “weeds my grandma used to pay me a dollar to pull from her yard.”
Still, despite the differences that set her apart in the status-driven world of entertainment, where being thin, young, blonde, and bubbly was sometimes considered a talent, Loni spent years trying to fit in: styling her hair just so, starving herself on crash “health cleanses,” dating men she thought she was supposed to be with.
In I TRIED TO CHANGE SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO: True Life Lessons beloved co-host of Fox’s ‘The Real” Loni Love explores all of the embarrassing blunders and unexpected breakthroughs that taught her how, by committing herself to her own path, she was able to take control of her own destiny. Loni tells the uproariously funny story of how, through mistake after mistake, she overcame the trap of self-improvement and instead learned to embrace who she was.
As Loni writes, “There’s a saying a lot of people live by: ‘Fake it till you make it.’ For me, it’s always been ‘Fake it, and then have the whole thing blow up in your face.'”
To many, Loni personifies the American Dream: she came from nothing and has an inspiring success story during these challenging times. In the book, Loni opens up about how she was arrested over a soda by a white police officer, concluding, “it taught me a lot.” Shaken by the experience, Love began studying the criminal justice system, telling PEOPLE magazine, “I started seeing the biases against people of color, especially black men,” she said. “It kind of all connects with why I decided to go on to co-host a talk show because I wanted to have those issues focused on as well. Because in my opinion, I thought that if you’re on a daily talk show and if once in a while, you can talk about the injustices and show it and discuss it, maybe we can all learn from it.”
Loni’s candid and down-to-earth writing will encourage readers to learn from past hardships. I TRIED TO CHANGE SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO is available wherever books are sold on June 23 from Hachette Go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Loni Love is a comedian and the winner of an Emmy (2018) for “Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show Host” and two NAACP Image Awards for “Outstanding Talk Series” (all for The Real). She is the magnetic, hilarious, sexy (Loni demanded we put this in) cohost of Fox’s The Real and nationally syndicated radio show Café Mocha as well as a recurring guest DJ on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
SOURCE Hachette Books