Loose Girl

A Memoir of Promiscuity

By: Kerry Cohen PsyD LPC PsyD LPC

Narrated by: Anna Caputo

This captivating and deeply emotional memoir pulls back the curtain on the complex relationship women have between their bodies, love, and the way the two work together.

Kerry Cohen is eleven years old when she recognizes the power of her body in the leer of a grown man. Her parents are recently divorced and it doesn't take long before their lassitude and Kerry's desire to stand out—to be memorable in some way—combine to lead her down a path she knows she shouldn't take. Kerry wanted attention. She wanted love. But not really understanding what love was, not really knowing how to get it, she reached for sex instead.

Loose Girl is Kerry Cohen's captivating memoir about her descent into promiscuity and how she gradually found her way toward real intimacy. The story of addiction—not just to sex, but to male attention—Loose Girl is also the story of a young girl who came to believe that boys and men could give her life meaning. It didn't matter who he was. It was their movement that mattered, their being together. And for a while, that was enough.

From the early rush of exploration to the day she learned to quiet the desperation and allow herself to love and be loved, Kerry's story is never less than riveting. In rich and immediate detail, Loose Girl re-creates what it feels like to be in that desperate moment, when a girl tries to control a boy by handing over her body, when the touch of that boy seems to offer proof of something, but ultimately delivers little more than emptiness.

Kerry Cohen's journey from that hopeless place to her current confident and fulfilled existence is a cautionary tale and a revelation for girls young and old. The unforgettable memoir of one young woman who desperately wanted to matter, Loose Girl will speak to countless others with its compassion, understanding, and love.

Critic reviews

"Cohen's brutal honesty about her relentless request for companionship is refreshingly relatable."—Entertainment Weekly

"Cohen recounts her harrowing litany of hookups through clear, poignant, spare-no-details prose."—Marie Claire

Praise for Lush
"Raw, intimate and brave, Lush tears apart the usual advice about drinking and addiction (guess what, AA isn't the only answer), and chronicles Cohen's journey toward a healing that at first she can only image. Gorgeously written and audaciously intelligent, here is a controversial and compelling look at finding your own way back."—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You

"Kerry Cohen applies her legendary wit and sagacity to women's often subtly destructive dance with alcohol. With great vulnerability and dynamic prose, Cohen examines her own descent into the bottle, its ruinous consequences, and her courageous fight to find her footing in her real life again. This is a story you won't soon forget."—Jillian Lauren, New York Times bestselling memoirist of Some Girls: My Life in a Harem and Everything You Ever Wanted

"Holy mother of wine--finally a woman wrestles the story of what it is really like to be a woman away from what we've been told we are supposed to be. Kerry Cohen's Lush will light you up, crack you up, make you bawl, and most of all, allow you to breathe again. I'm beyond thrilled to read a book where a woman tells the truth without falling into the sap-hole of the sin-and-redemption narrative. There is no sin and redemption. There's just our lives, and as Cohen reminds us one truth bomb at a time, they are messily gorgeous. Move over Mary Karr."—Lidia Yuknavitch, bestselling author of The Book of Joan and The Misfit's Manifesto

"I love this book. I am this book. Kerry Cohen has written a memoir that wrestles with the subtleties, the ambiguities, the sheer alluring horrifying real-life mess of mid-life alcohol addiction. For those of us wrestling with demons--and who isn't?--Lush is a solace as powerful as red wine."—Claire Dederer, bestselling author of Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses

"Unapologetic in that it offers no trite "darkness to light" narrative about alcoholism, Cohen's book instead offers a sharp-eyed look at what it means to be a midlife female unable to cope with either personal demons or the heavy external social pressures placed on women. An intimate and unsparing book of self-reflection."—Kirkus

second time rating an audiobook

I probably have purchased 200 plus audiobooks , however.,this will be my second time rating one I now truly feel that a good writer is an artist and when someone can write a picture that others can see and feel i want to let them know that I liked it great job !!! I'm now a fan!!! also fantastic narration

Mediocre listening

The story was ok, but low on my list as far as memoirs go. The readers voice made it extremely difficult to keep listening, as she sounded like she was whining the entire time. Maybe that was the point, so you feel a sense of defeat in her voice throughout the entirety of the book. I finished it because I was vested in finding out how it ended, but it wrapped up her story so fast, after drawing out the relationships that didn’t matter, there should have been more depth in telling about finding real love. I commend the author for her vulnerability in telling her story, but would not recommend this book.

Well-written and moving

I thought this book was very well-written and quite engaging. However, the self-examination and gradual change I was hoping for didn’t happen. The very brief self-discovery in the last minutes of the Audible version left me feeling unconvinced that any meaningful change occurred. Perhaps it was cathartic for the author to write the book, I hope she eventually got the help she needed to change a relationship pattern that wasn’t working for her - one that persisted throughout her early adulthood and likely beyond.

Relatable

Wow! I heard my own story in hers. I found the words to that I haven’t been able to come up with to describe and unpack my experiences.

Very Good Narrator!!

This audiobook gets a solid 4 stars from me ⭐⭐⭐⭐. First off, have to give the narrator props because she did a fine job narrating this piece. She really brought it to life in my opinion. The book is very well written. I could relate with the main character a few times in her story. The emotions that she felt were told well. The overall story was not what I expected, but instead, was something different that I enjoyed very much. I think we all have obsessions in life, obsessions that sometimes we want to help us fill a need in our lives.

This book is definitely worth a credit! I would definitely recommend this audiobook to anyone that enjoys a good memoir about young women going through some soul searching in their young lives and trying to figure things out for themselves and figure out who they are, especially those that have a troubled or complicated past.

But, hey, that's JustMyOpinion.😉

(Review From March 11th, 2026)