Reviewed by Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Readers' Favorite

Have you ever considered the meaning of the word ‘love’? It is multifaceted. In Sameer Amini’s Unconditional Love, we learn about the first love, which is the one we’re given at birth. We haven’t earned it; being born is reason enough to receive it. The second love is the one we choose: we strive to make it work and build a life around it. Perhaps this is the most complicated form of love; it certainly can be challenging at times. Then, finally, there’s the love that we feel when our own children arrive, before they can earn it or even remember it, as was our case when we were born. There are many forms of love that evolve and exist in between and around these three loves. These loves are what make us and, sometimes, what break us in many ways.

Sameer Amini’s book, Unconditional Love: The Love We Are Given, the Love We Choose, and the Love We Give, is a thorough look at and a guide to what love means in the many stages of our lives. The book follows the three concepts of love, from our beginnings, to our chosen, and to the time when we give it unconditionally. The book is part meditation, but it is also a science, pointing out that our hearts have always known, have always recognized, what love is, from our own unconditional receiving of love, to choosing it and then passing it on unconditionally. The end of the book is as thorough as the book itself, coming full circle with pages left for the reader to fill in their own experiences of love, challenging the reader to return to one memory of love, one that has stayed, to write it down and consider how it defines their sense of love. The exercise moves further, asking the reader to consider what this memory of love taught them and how it helped them further define love. The conclusion is a list of scientific aspects discussed in the book about this simple, yet complex, theory of love. This is an interesting read, one that will inspire readers to consider their own ideas of love and how it defines them.