My book, Slip, is now available for pre-order!

Hi everyone,

This week, I have some big news to share with you: my book, Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery, has begun making its appearance in the world and is now available for pre-order! 

You can pre-order Slip from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, Books-A-Million, your independent bookstore, or wherever you like to buy books.

Here she is:

Kudos to Simon Element’s Jenny Carrow and designer Emily Mahon for creating this beautiful cover. I love the salmon color and how the script font helps convey the personal elements of the book. I also like how the title acts as an image in and of itself, with a letter-size progression that is open for interpretation. It could represent the actual act of slipping; different body sizes; weight loss and gain in sickness and recovery; or how when we’re in recovery, the eating disorder shrinks to make room for an expanded sense of self.

I’m excited to know that Slip will soon be in readers’ hands, and I hope it’s the kind of book that will stay in their hearts and minds. The book won’t be published until August 5, 2025, but I encourage you to pre-order it before then. You might be thinking, why should I pre-order it now, rather than waiting until it’s out? The answer is simple: pre-orders are hugely important for authors because they contribute to a book’s overall success. Pre-orders can help create buzz for a book, and retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble use pre-orders to help figure out how many copies to stock.

More than anything, I care about pre-orders because I want to get my book in front of a large audience so that it can help as many people as possible. The more people who buy my book, the greater the likelihood that it will inform our collective understanding of eating disorders and the different pathways toward recovery.  

When writing Slip, I drew upon my personal experience with anorexia and the hundreds of patients, researchers, and clinicians whom I interviewed and surveyed for the book. My own experience dates back to when I was eleven and lost my mother to breast cancer. In death’s wake, I thought that if I stayed the same size I was when my mother was alive, maybe I could feel closer to her. If growing up meant living without my mother, then I wanted to stay little forever. Less than a year after she died, I developed anorexia nervosa and spent much of my adolescence in and out of the hospital and residential treatment.

As I got better, I was determined to reach the gold standard: “full recovery.” But every time I faltered, it felt like I had failed. Under the guise of someone who was fully recovered, I fell into a secret binge-restrict cycle that lasted for a decade, all the while feeling like I was failing at both anorexia and recovery. To get better, I had to reshape my views on recovery by thinking of it as a work in progress rather than a perfectionistic ideal.

I chronicle all of this in Slip, and I weave in original reporting to illuminate the latest scientific research on eating disorders (especially around genetics and neurobiology); the systemic issues that make it difficult for some people to receive care; the evolution of treatment; and the diversity of people affected by eating disorders. Central to the book is a new framework I created — one in which I frame eating disorder recovery as a “middle place” where slips happen, but progress is always possible. By titling the book Slip, I want to remove the stigma and shame around this word and show that recovery isn’t linear or perfect; it’s often messy and ongoing. I hope Slip will offer up a more inclusive look at recovery — one that welcomes healing in all its forms. 

I see this book as being first and foremost for the 70 million people worldwide who struggle with eating disorders. But it is also for their caretakers and loved ones, and for medical providers and educators who want to better understand these complicated disorders. Even those who aren’t affected by an eating disorder will find points of relatability in the book’s overarching themes of loss, love, motherhood, sickness, and recovery.

I hope you’ll consider pre-ordering Slip for yourself and/or someone you know. If doing so is outside of your means, you can ask your local library to pre-order the book and place it on hold for you when it arrives.

I’m grateful for everyone who helped make this book possible, and I’m optimistic it will make a meaningful contribution to the canon of memoirs that shift paradigms and change perspectives. 

Thank you, dear reader. Your support means a lot!

~Mallary