The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Watkins, Claire Vaye. I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness. Riverhead Books, 2021.

Claire Vaye Watkins' novel I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness is written from the main character Claire's first person point of view. The novel employs a subverted hero's journey structure, and employs the past and present tenses. The following summary uses the present tense and a linear mode of explanation.

Shortly after Claire gives birth to her baby, Ruth, she plunges into a state of severe postpartum depression. She cannot love or care for the baby in the way she anticipated. Her inability to attach to Ruth has immediate ramifications on her marriage to Theo. Though she and Theo have had an open marriage for some time, after the baby's birth, this arrangement becomes more entrapping than liberating. Claire soon realizes that she has fallen in love with her biologist, Noah, and thus broken the one rule in her relationship with Theo.

One day while home alone masturbating, Claire discovers a series of teeth forming inside her vagina. Though the teeth initially unsettle Claire, she grows to love them. They are her secret, and she alone knows about and cares for them.

Claire leaves her home with Theo and Ruth for a reading in Reno, Nevada. While here, she spends time with her old friends, Ty, Ivy, and Rust. Ivy and Rust's marriage and family life makes Claire feel self-conscious about her own domestic incapacities. Over the course of the trip, however, she experiences a series of revelations about her life and identity.

While sitting on the plane awaiting departure for home, Claire texts with Noah. His message asking her to stay out west feels like a sign to Claire. She demands to be let off the plane. She then meets up with Noah on Mount Rose, where she and Noah end up living out of Noah's van for several months. She avoids communicating openly with Theo, and takes a leave of absence from her teaching job.

Meanwhile, specters from Claire's past haunt her. She often thinks about her mother, Martha, father, Paul, and ex-boyfriend Jesse, all of whom are dead. Old letters from her mother to her cousin, Denise, her father's memoir, and online photos of Jesse force her to confront how each of these relationships have shaped her.

When Noah ends the affair with Claire, she boards another flight home. She ends up getting caught in Las Vegas, and sees the flight cancellation as a sign. Spending time in Vegas, however, forces her to think more about her family. At first these memories are unsettling. Soon Claire understands that she must visit her sister, Lise, before returning to Ann Arbor. Together, she and Lise reunite with their half-sibling, Lyn, and visit their grandmother and aunt. While they are together, Claire tells Lise that their old house in Tecopa is slated for demolition. Lise insists that they visit the house together. She also scolds Claire for handling her marriage so haphazardly.

When they get to the Tecopa house, they find only ruins. Claire wants to say something meaningful, but struggles to find the right words. After Lise returns to Vegas, Claire spends more time in the desert. She eventually begins communicating with Theo again. Their phone conversations help her to reconcile her once-disparate versions of self. Theo suggests that he and Ruth move out west when Claire says she cannot return home. After they move, Claire recreates her relationship with her daughter.