Susan Lucci has spent more than half a century being watched. As Erica Kane on All My Children, she perfected the art of performing vulnerability while keeping something private. La Lucci, her second memoir and the audiobook narrated entirely in her own voice, operates on a different principle altogether: this time, she lets you in. I came to this knowing Lucci primarily as a pop-culture fixture, the woman who lost the Daytime Emmy nineteen consecutive times before finally winning in 1999. What I was not prepared for was the candor and specificity of what she shares here, and how effectively the audiobook format amplifies it.
A Cardiovascular Scare Turns Her Into an Advocate
The memoir picks up where Lucci's New York Times bestselling All My Life left off, but the emotional territory is sharply different. Loss is the current running through these pages: the death of her husband Helmut Huber, a decades-long marriage that anchored her through everything the entertainment industry could throw at her, and the slower grief of watching her mother decline and pass at 104 years old. Lucci does not reach for easy consolation. She names the specific shape of her anguish and then describes, with the same precision, how she found her way through it. The chapter titled Thank You for Asking, in which she addresses the questions fans send her most often, could easily have been filler. Instead it reads as one of the more intimate passages in the book, because the questions reveal what her audience actually worries about for her.
One reviewer noted this is personal, poignant, and specific about her life after AMC and that it covers her silent and frightening heart disease and surgeries. That specificity about her cardiovascular health scare, and her subsequent decision to become an advocate for women's heart health, gives La Lucci a dimension that separates it from the typical celebrity memoir. She is not simply recounting a life. She is making a case for paying attention to your body, for speaking up when something feels wrong, and for understanding that the symptoms women experience during cardiac events are routinely dismissed or missed entirely. Coming from a woman with her visibility, that message carries weight.
Listening on Headphones Feels Like a Private Talk
The audiobook format is, bluntly, the right way to experience this memoir. Lucci has an actor's command of pacing, pause, and emotional coloring. She knows how to hold a line. She knows when to slow down and let a moment breathe. Passages about Helmut in particular make the intimacy of listening on headphones feel like stepping into a private conversation rather than a performance. That is a rare thing. Many celebrity self-narrations feel like polished readings of a prepared script. Lucci sounds like she is actually telling you something she has not quite said out loud before. The nearly one hundred never-before-seen photographs mentioned in the physical edition obviously do not translate here, but the vocal performance compensates by putting you directly in the emotional center of each story.
Written in collaboration with New York Times bestselling author Laura Morton, the memoir's prose is clean and well-structured without losing Lucci's distinctive voice. Morton has worked with enough high-profile subjects to know when to step back and let the subject's cadence lead. The result is a book that reads naturally rather than ghostwritten, and in the audio version that naturalness becomes central to the listening experience.
The Pacing Lingers Here, Moves Quickly There
Readers approaching La Lucci expecting backstage All My Children gossip or a tell-all about the entertainment industry will need to recalibrate. One reviewer frankly noted: this is Lucci reflecting on her pretty fabulous life, it is personal, poignant, no gossip. This is not a criticism so much as a clarification of what the book actually is. The closest Lucci comes to industry commentary is in her discussion of reinvention: the reality television work, the continued public engagements, the decision to keep working and keep saying yes long after she could have coasted. But she approaches those choices as personal decisions rooted in values, not as industry analysis. If you arrive expecting sharp elbows, you will find instead something rarer from someone at her level: genuine humility about what has sustained her.
The pacing across six hours and fifty-five minutes is thoughtful but occasionally uneven. Certain passages linger while others, particularly around her professional reinvention, move more quickly than the subject matter might warrant. Listeners who prefer a tighter narrative arc may notice this. But for those who come to memoir for the texture of a life rather than the structure of a story, the pace feels appropriate. This is someone reflecting in real time rather than constructing a thesis.
Interior Life Is the Whole Point Here
Fans of Lucci's work across her career, from All My Children through her many later television appearances, will find La Lucci deeply satisfying. But the audience is broader than that. Anyone navigating late-life grief, particularly the loss of a long-term partner, will recognize something true in how Lucci describes the practical and emotional texture of that experience. Her account of her own cardiac health scare makes this audiobook genuinely valuable for women concerned about cardiovascular symptoms being overlooked or minimized. Anyone who enjoyed All My Life will want this follow-up. And anyone who has ever wondered how a woman who has spent decades in public maintains any authentic interior life will find a real answer here.
Skip this if you want Hollywood drama or industry gossip. The memoir is about interior life, not exterior spectacle. It rewards listeners willing to meet it on its own terms.
Key Details
- Read by: Susan Lucci reads her own memoir with the warmth and precision of someone who spent decades commanding a room, genuine feeling bleeds through every page.
- At its heart: resilience after grief, reinvention, women's health advocacy
- Vibe: Tender and candid, with flashes of humor
- Short version: A genuinely moving sequel memoir that earns its emotional weight by going further than most celebrity accounts dare.
Common Questions
Do I need to listen to All My Life before this audiobook?
La Lucci works as a standalone, though listeners familiar with her first memoir will have richer context. Lucci briefly orients new listeners to key relationships and milestones, so you will not feel lost, but the emotional continuity is stronger if you have heard the first book.
Is this audiobook mostly about her time on All My Children?
No. While her soap opera career is part of the backdrop, La Lucci focuses on her life after AMC ended, specifically the death of her husband Helmut, her mother's passing, her own cardiac health crisis, and her reinvention as a public figure in subsequent years.
How does Susan Lucci perform as narrator of her own memoir audiobook?
Exceptionally well. She brings an actor's sense of timing and emotional precision to the narration, particularly in passages about grief. The listening experience feels intimate rather than performative, which is not a given with celebrity self-narration.
Does this audiobook address her advocacy work for women's heart health?
Yes. Lucci discusses her own frightening cardiac diagnosis and the surgeries that followed, and explains how that experience led her to become a vocal advocate for awareness of cardiovascular symptoms in women, which medical professionals frequently misdiagnose or underestimate.
