Rating:
2 Stars

In a nutshell:
Anger, vulnerability, and desperately needing an honest editor.

Best for:
I can see that many people have sung the praises of this book. If you’re interested in reading it, maybe see if the people who liked it seem to have similar taste to you? And no matter what, don’t pick the audio book.

Quote that made me think:
N/A

Why I chose it:
Memoir read by the author. That’s like, at least 25% of what I read. Kinda wish I hadn’t.

Review:
Book CN: Child sexual assault, domestic violence

Some memoirs written by famous people are brilliant. The can get to the heart of really tricky matters, discuss important issues, and help the reader feel as though they have gotten to know the author. At the same time, I think that we all know that every memoir author has to make decisions about what to include and what to leave out. Sometimes that means one gets a fun little collection of essays that shows some vulnerability but that the author has been clear isn’t the full story, which is absolutely fine (like Anna Kendrick’s Scrappy Little Nobody). Sometimes that means one reads what feels quite self indulgent and lacking self-awareness (like Rebel Wilson’s Rebel Rising).

Here we get something else – the ‘maybe this story should have stayed between you and your therapist’ memoir. And that is NOT to say that memoirs cannot or should not dive into really tricky, challenging, even uncomfortable topic areas. I think a great example of this is Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died. Great writing, tough topics, but I got the sense that the author had processed her emotions, and her story, and gotten to a point where she could tell it.

I don’t think Applegate is there yet. I think she has faced – and come through – way more than any one person should have to handle. And she’s very forthcoming about how all of it has affected her. She leans HEAVILY into the opposite of bright-siding things – she is more likely to focus on the negatives than the positives in any situation. And that is her absolute right – she gets to decide how she handles the trials she faces. But there’s an overall chaos to this memoir that does not work in its current form. I think the editor and publisher have let Applegate down, because she has put so much of herself out there, in a book that ultimately is not, to me, well done. And as always, it feels gross to write that about someone’s life story, but the book is telling her story, and I think her story deserved better.

She also suffers from the same thing I’ve seen in other memoirs – the inclusion of problematic people without acknowledging it. This is such a small thing, but in a book where there isn’t actually just a flood of name dropping, two names she does choose to drop somewhat affectionately are Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt. Two men who have been accused of domestic abuse. Wild.

As I said in the title, what I think may have deeply impacted my feelings on this book was the bizarre delivery of the audio book. When talking about things she will go from chuckling to actually crying, to making weird sarcastic voices in places where it doesn’t quite make sense. It felt as though someone was reading it as sort of a joke melodrama audition? Where they’d not read the material beforehand but got to parts where they wanted to make an acting choice and just went all over the place? It was disconcerting to the point that I again want to know where were the people who should have caught this. Where was the audio book producer, the voice coach? Was she receiving proper support when having to put her voice to the words she’d written about her own trauma? It was just … off. So I do wonder if reading a hard copy of the book would have led me to a different conclusion. Alas, I’m not about to read this again, so this review will stand as is.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
No.