Review by Booklist Review
In Stone's first book, she turns her clever, sparkly gel pen to a series of essays covering everything from growing up in the Ozarks to her experiences with severe obsessive compulsive disorder to how some people just aren't meant to be in the office environment (and she's one of them). Stone paints a picture of a conflicted girlhood that may be familiar to many women who grew up in the early 2000s, and of a people-pleasing girl who turned into a people-pleasing adult. Stone is a sharply funny writer with a way with words that may leave many readers laughing out loud, and her pursuit of perfection has left her in some pretty hilarious circumstances, like the time she adopted a curmudgeonly, unmanageable Boston Terrier that, when she took to meet her parents, promptly peed on her mother. Interspersed among the essays are short, comic pieces: meditations on the personality quiz, what goes in your bugout bag, her love of terrible shark movies. For fans of Jessi Klein or Samantha Irby.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Morning Brew contributor Stone debuts with a witty collection of essays about growing up a perfectionist in the thinness-obsessed, tabloid-crazed 2000s and beyond. She charts her long struggle with body image, from being labeled a "seventeen-minute miler" in elementary school gym class and garnering praise for shedding "baby weight" in high school to eating issues that lingered into her 20s and the measure of bodily acceptance she eventually found through weight lifting. Elsewhere, she recalls growing up in a repressive evangelical home and struggling to reconcile how she could "be pure of heart when my brain was on twenty-four-hour taboo cinema mode," bombarded by doubts about God's existence and "major, major pervert" thoughts. Stone's at her best when probing the psychological complexities of young womanhood, as when she details her college-age efforts to be a "cool" girl to attract men, including a blueberry vodka--swilling "upperclassman with a long Eastern European last name, a wry smile, and a tiny, tiny butt." Stone's painfully sharp observations will draw readers in, and her honesty will keep them enthralled. This will go a long way toward helping readers feel less alone. (July)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Personal essays mining the author's struggles to improve and, ultimately, accept herself. Stone, a freelance humor and finance writer, introduces her debut essay collection with a piece about who she was in 2004, "on the cusp of puberty, preparing to plunge into a lifetime of deep, sweaty self-hatred." She named her prepubescent shame and anxiety Madison, described as "a phantom formed by everything I'd never be" whose message to the author was, "Everything about you is wrong and gross, and everyone can tell." The author recounts making a list of her failings, such as "cavernous pores and…social ineptitude," in order to work her way through them and remake herself. While this original list has since been lost, Stone's inner critic is alive and well. "Madison's 2004 demands were nothing compared to the round-the-clock hellscape that is the internet," she writes. The following essay, "Nothing's Funnier Than Naked," begins, "I was five the first time I felt weird about my boobs." After cataloging a series of incidents involving what she calls "body shame," the author shares her realization that obsessing over physical imperfections comes at the cost of forging connections. In a piece that recounts the effects of religion on her lifelong perfectionism, she notes, "Childhood Evangelicalism is packed with ready-made rituals designed to annihilate the obsessive-compulsive brain." Regarding how she eventually abandoned religion: "I ditched the church, but I kept the fear." A self-described "insufferable goody-two-shoes" by the time she started high school, the author admits that she has "no idea exactly who or why the people-pleasing took root." The book closes with "Madison Forever," in which she tells us that "Madison's still here, representing the parts of myself I'd most like to ignore." This stands in contrast to the rest of the largely surface-level text, in which Stone maintains a hyperfocus on these parts. While Stone's self-deprecating humor is occasionally endearing, the self-absorption and vapidity wear thin. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
