Elizabeth Hayt never wanted to conform to the life everyone desired for her. She reluctantly took the plunge into marriage and motherhood, all the while seeking more. Her up-front memoir, I'm No Saint: A Nasty Little Memoir of Love and Leaving is an interesting yet fractured look at a woman living on the edge of trouble.

Hayt talks about her childhood, and even then signs of heading down the slippery slope were there: sexual activity combined with drug use in response to parents who were both controlling (in the case of her father) and mentally ill/emotionally overcompensating (her mother). Hayt never apologizes for her activities and even offers up appropriate explanations for her actions (no male role model, clingy mother). All through the pages of I'm No Saint, we live through her eating disorders, drug and sexual addictions, and the final move toward recovery.

Unfortunately, the one who suffered most during (and probably after) Hayt’s experiences was her son. She decided (yes, everything she did was a self-indulgent decision, in my opinion) to basically abandon her son to be raised by a babysitter because he was difficult. This left Hayt free to indulge herself sexually and with drugs. And the extent of her drug use is kept a secret through most of the memoir, even from the reader.

Although I'm No Saint does ring true, I was ultimately left wondering what the point of the book really was. The ending is very abrupt and doesn’t give a sense of a completed story. I think the author wrote the book hoping for a happy ending, but it didn’t work out the way she had planned. However, that was the story of much of her life, so I suppose it’s a fitting ending. Many troubling issues, as mentioned above, are detailed in the pages of I'm No Saint. This is not a book for readers looking for a clean-cut redemption story. It’s brutally honest but also brutally transparent and graphic. There’s not much joy to be found in these pages. The pervasive mood is sadness, and Hayt doesn’t really experience any joy, even at the conclusion.