Is After 52 Broken Promises, I Finally Let Go Fiction Or Nonfiction?

Flip through the pages of 'After 52 Broken Promises, I Finally Let Go' and you’ll probably feel like you’re reading a novel — the pacing, the crafted scenes, the turn-of-phrase hooks that land like a rom-com one moment and a quiet breakup monologue the next. I personally read it as fiction the first time because the author leans into narrative structure: there’s a clear arc, recurring motifs, and characters who evolve in ways that feel deliberately shaped for emotional payoff. The voice often slips into evocative, novelistic description — streets, meals, and small domestic details that are written to build atmosphere rather than to document dates and verifiable events. Publishers, booksellers, and library cataloguing usually shelve it with contemporary fiction for that reason; it’s packaged and promoted alongside other fictional breakup-and-healing stories, and the blur of humor and catharsis reads like something crafted to entertain and move rather than to record an objective life history.

That said, the book flirts with memoir energy — first-person confessional passages, present-tense immediacy, and episodes that feel ripped-from-life — so I understand why readers sometimes argue it’s nonfiction. To me, the key is intention and how the material is handled. In this case, the narrative choices point toward a fictionalized exploration of themes: trust, repetitive relationship patterns, and the slow art of letting go. The characters feel archetypal enough to serve the themes rather than function as strict historical portraits. There are also explicit creative flourishes — small surreal beats, compressed timelines, and invented dialogues — that are strong signs of imaginative shaping. If you’re trying to decide how to file it on your shelf, think about whether you want it to sit beside comforting novels like 'Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine' or on the memoir shelf; I put it with my novels because I loved the deliberate storytelling craft and the way it used fictional techniques to make the emotional truth hit harder. Reading it felt like taking a warm, sharp story-walk: cathartic, carefully arranged, and quietly satisfying.

From another angle, I treated 'After 52 Broken Promises, I Finally Let Go' like a piece of memoir-adjacent nonfiction when I reread it with note-taking in mind. The voice is intimate and confessional in a way that resembles personal essays and healing memoirs: the author lists specific turning points, uses reflective commentary to draw life lessons, and even lays out strategies for recognizing and breaking toxic cycles. Those features made me nod and bookmark passages as if I were reading a self-help or recovery text rather than a straight-up novel. The emotional honesty reads like lived experience, and that lends the book the credibility you usually reserve for nonfiction; it’s the sort of book I’d hand to a friend who’s looking for both practical insight and the comfort of knowing someone else has survived similar repetition and heartbreak.

While certain scenes feel polished, the overall takeaway is practical and instructive, which is why I’ve recommended it in real-life contexts the way you’d recommend a helpful memoir. It gives concrete moments to examine — small promises, recurring excuses, the tipping point that finally prompted release — and frames those moments as lessons rather than purely dramatic beats. For readers who want actionable emotional tools and relatable confessionals, this nonfiction-leaning framing makes the book feel like a companion on the shelf. Personally, I appreciated its candidness and the sense that someone had not only survived but also mapped out how they did it, which felt comforting in a very real way.