-
See Our Best Book
Club Books of 2026!
A Memoir of Art, Addiction and Transformation
by Tommy Dorfman
From filmmaker, writer, producer, and actor Tommy Dorfman—currently starring in Broadway's Romeo + Juliet—comes a beautifully written, bracingly original memoir, structured through the profound revelations of a single tarot card reading, chronicling her troubled teen years, the highs and lows of her creative career, and her journey to self-acceptance.
On a hot summer day, twenty-eight-year-old Tommy Dorfman was enjoying a beautiful outing on a boat. But inside she felt unmoored. After a lifetime of confusion, she'd finally gained clarity around her gender and had begun to transition. But there were still parts of herself she'd locked away, elements of her story that she needed, for the first time, to fully confront. She sought guidance in a tarot deck, using it as a tool to make sense of her life up until that point.
Maybe This Will Save Me, Dorfman's spellbinding debut memoir, is structured through the cards of that tarot pull. The youngest of five children, she grappled with her own identity from an early age and spent her teenage years numbed by drugs and alcohol. At the same time, she harbored dreams of creative stardom and a desire to make herself seen. But the path, at times, had felt impossible.
Charting her early struggles in theater, her rise to fame in 13 Reasons Why, her hard-fought journey to sobriety, and the relationships that shaped her, Dorfman's luminously written, bracingly honest memoir reintroduces us to a writer who stands alongside Michelle Zauner, Jennette McCurdy, and Maggie Nelson in her visionary scope and craft.
"Combustibly propulsive…Translating her full life to this fully engrossing book, Dorfman asserts herself as this kind of artist, too: an imaginative and truthful writer in steady ownership of her story." —Booklist (starred review)
"There's wisdom here in places, but it fails to take flight." —Publishers Weekly
"Tommy Dorfman has written a fascinating, innovative twist on memoir, a book that breaks new forms to produce flashing vignettes of insight while compiling a moving document on the process of becoming." —Torrey Peters, national bestselling author of Detransition, Baby
"In Tommy Dorfman's hands, evolution is nonlinear and kaleidoscopic: in some ways fated from the beginning, in others not guaranteed but slowly earned. Her memoir resists simplicity at every turn. It might have been easier to write as a past tense proclamation, but Dorfman creates from the present, the messy middle, which is all we have. Maybe This Will Save Me is at once a love letter to the person she's been all along and to the mysterious, unending process of becoming." —Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists
This information about Maybe This Will Save Me was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tommy Dorfman is an Atlanta-born Brooklyn-based writer, director, and actor. Her debut feature film, I Wish You All The Best, premiered at SXSW in 2024 and will be theatrically distributed in 2025. As an actor she will be making her Broadway debut as Sam Gold's Romeo and Juliet at Circle in the Square in 2024, and is known best for her work in Netflix's 13 Reasons Why. Her production company, Down the Line, launched in 2024 and is focused on shining a light on various human experiences not yet told in film, television, and theater. She holds a BA from Fordham University, is the recipient of a GLAAD Award, and loves being gay. This is her first book.
The Sister's Curse
by Nicola Solvinic
The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes
by Chanel Cleeton
The Vanishing Place
by Zoë Rankin
 (1).gif)
Children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
