Just not very good. I don't quite understand why she was given a contract to write a memoir. Her life didn't seem that unusual or compelling or at least she didn't write it as such. She had a complicated relationship with her dad and some unfortunate things happen to her but the book read more like a diary than a memoir.

This book was engaging in the middle third, when it was taking place during her college years and early career days, but the beginning was very dry and too simplistic in delivery, and the ending slipped back into that almost personal journal entry type writing.

The major subject matter in the first 30-40% was her "oppressive" Evangelical religious upbringing, but it must have been Evangelical extra-light because she got to do things like: listen to secular music, go to the movies, cheerlead in a public school, take ballet lessons wearing tights and short skirts, and babysit for people who smoke, drank, and swore. She also only had to attend church once, sometimes twice a week, and I also don't know why she thought spankings with paddles and wooden spoons was exclusive to Evangelical parenting in the '70s. Her supposedly abnormally oppressive upbringing sounded pretty normal for religious households of any type. She was presenting it as extraordinary and it was basically ordinary. After the tragedy in her family, the writing went back to utilitarian again with no spark to it.

If it hadn't been a review book, I would have DNFed it somewhere in that first forty percent, and I see that others did. Many of the events could have been covered in a few paragraphs, but went on for pages. It should have been edited for content much more concisely.

Hmm...not as interesting as it sounded. it read like many of own stories from the time period. I think maybe our grandparents abdicated raising our parents. Anyway, we all survived the craziness in our own ways. I think maybe I'm not the audience for this one.

This was a solid-enough memoir but I really wanted more. It is well-written and edited; it just needs something else. I enjoyed it, though!

Quite an easy read to follow-it is a memoir- Although when I read it I thought that the book might be more meaty than it was. Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for giving me an ARC and the opportunity to read this book. In exchange for my honest , unbiased review.