CrossBingeCrossBinge
Book: Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing →

More like Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

Cross-media recommendations across film, TV, games, books & music — picked by taste.

Matthew Perry's memoir traces the arc from a childhood shuttling between separated parents through a nationally ranked tennis career to landing on Friends — and through the addiction that shadowed all of it. Perry writes with the same wit he deployed on screen, turning self-examination into something that reads as honest rather than self-pitying: the void recognition couldn't fill, the fractured family that shaped him, and the hard-won peace of sobriety. Readers who connect with Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing tend to want that same emotional directness across every medium.

About Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is a memoir by the American-Canadian actor Matthew Perry. It was released by Macmillan Publishers on November 1, 2022, a year before Perry's death on October 28, 2023. In the book, Perry details his decades-long struggle with alcoholism and addiction. Perry also details his personal life, including his relationships and time on the Friends TV series, in which he starred as Chandler Bing. The book was made available in digital, paperback, and hardcover formats, with Perry himself narrating the audiobook edition. Lisa Kudrow, who worked with Perry on Friends starring as Phoebe Buffay, provided the foreword, in which she describes Perry as "sweet, sensitive and rational".

From the Wikipedia article Friends,_Lovers,_and_the_Big_Terrible_Thing, available under CC BY-SA.

Films like Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

Series like Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

More books like Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

Frequently asked

What should I read after Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing?

We Can't Be Friends and The Motherfucker With the Hat both follow the aftermath of addiction in unflinching detail — the first through a teen subjected to a coercive "tough love" program, the second through a man just out of prison and trying to stay clean while love keeps complicating things.

What TV shows are like Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing?

Friends from College captures how old bonds grow complicated twenty years on; Bookie shares the chaotic Los Angeles energy of a life bouncing between highs and lows with no clean resolution in sight.

Why do readers connect so strongly with Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing?

The book is bracingly self-aware — it never asks for pity or easy absolution. Perry writes about fame, family fracture, and addiction with the same wit he used to hide the pain, which makes the honesty land harder.

Explore more