Cher didn’t mince words when it came to revealing the ups and downs in her personal and professional relationship with Sonny Bono. In her newly released book, Cher: The Memoir — Part One, the 78-year-old singer compared meeting Bono in November 1962 to “Maria and Tony in West Side Story,

Though Cher and Sonny Bono’s marriage lasted less than a decade, their musical hits endured. Yet Cher details in her new memoir that the success of her creative partnership with her late husband wasn’t equally shared.

Cher released the first installment of a planned two-part memoir Tuesday, “Cher: The Memoir, Part One,” spanning roughly the first half of the 78-year-old entertainer’s life, with anecdotes about a marriage to Sonny Bono she called “ loveless ” that led her to consider suicide at the height of their television fame in the 1970s.