Editors Reads Verdict
Spare is a more psychologically complex and better-written book than its pre-publication controversy suggested — a genuine memoir of grief, institutional pressure, and mental health struggle that happens to be set against the backdrop of the world's most famous family.
What We Loved
- The grief narrative around Diana is genuinely moving and written with considerable honesty
- The psychological self-examination is more rigorous than expected from a royal memoir
- The account of therapy and mental health is valuable given Harry's platform
- Ghostwriter J.R. Moehringer produces consistently readable prose
Minor Drawbacks
- The institutional and family criticisms invite a single-perspective reading on complex disputes
- Some specific accusations (the physical altercation with William, drug use) generated more heat than light
- The pre-publication leak strategy created reputational complications for the book's reception
- Readers sympathetic to other royal family members will find the portrait frustratingly one-sided
Key Takeaways
- → Grief suppressed in service of institutional image becomes a wound that shapes everything
- → The institution of the monarchy creates genuine psychological costs for those born into it
- → Mental health treatment requires willingness to seek it, which royal culture actively discourages
- → The press and the palace have a mutually sustaining relationship that can destroy individuals
- → Choosing your own family's wellbeing over institutional obligation is both simple and devastatingly costly
| Author | Prince Harry |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Random House |
| Pages | 416 |
| Published | January 10, 2023 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Memoir, Biography, Royal Biography |
| Difficulty | Beginner |
| Best For | Readers interested in royal biography, celebrity memoir, accounts of institutional pressure on mental health, and the specific experience of grief in public life. |
The Spare Speaks
The title comes from the British royal convention of “the heir and the spare” — the observation that Charles (now King Charles III) was the heir, and Harry was the backup, the insurance policy, the second son. Spare is, among other things, Harry’s argument that this institutional designation shaped his entire psychological life and contributed to everything that followed.
The book was ghostwritten by J.R. Moehringer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and memoirist whose previous ghostwriting credit is Andre Agassi’s Open — one of the finest celebrity memoirs ever published. Moehringer’s hand is evident in the prose quality, which is consistently readable and occasionally more than that.
The Diana Narrative
The book’s most genuinely moving sections deal with Diana’s death — Harry’s experience of learning about it, the years of suppressed grief that followed, and the specific ways that royal protocol and media culture prevented him from processing it normally. The image of a twelve-year-old boy walking behind his mother’s coffin while cameras followed every expression, and the decades of psychological damage that this public performance of private grief inflicted, is rendered with real honesty.
Harry’s account of finally being able to cry about his mother — in therapy, decades later — is the book’s emotional center and its most personally revelatory passage.
The Controversial Passages
The pre-publication leak of specific passages — the altercation with William, the drug use disclosure, certain characterizations of other royals — generated controversy that somewhat obscured the book’s more substantive content. These passages are real and their inclusion is a genuine editorial choice about what truth-telling in this context requires.
The Mental Health Thread
Harry’s account of discovering therapy, of learning that there were psychological tools for working with grief and anxiety that he had never been told existed, is valuable independent of the royal context. His platform for mental health advocacy is significant, and the memoir provides personal context for that advocacy.
Our rating: 3.9/5 — A more honest and more psychologically complex memoir than its controversy suggested — most valuable for its grief narrative and mental health content, with appropriate skepticism reserved for its most disputed family accounts.
Ready to Read Spare?
Check the current price on Amazon.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)Prices and availability are subject to change. See Amazon for current price.
Review last updated: