I was so invested in the story of the author’s mother’s connection to a serial killer. (She should truly consider true crime in the future). The rest of the memoir fell a bit flat for me. It was a really intriguing family dynamic but I felt as if the author was holding back a bit. However, gold star for the cover!

Typically I don’t read memoirs but this one resonated with me and the author wrote the heck out of this story, the characters and the flow. The perspective shared by Hempel was eye opening and interesting. Family dysfunctions are part of our family dynamic how we manage it speaks volumes. Hempel did an excellent job sharing her family with us. As she struggles to find her place she actually joins a cult in the midst of family drama.
I felt some of the pain threaded in The Family Outing and thought while reading wow how are you moving forward.

Thank you for showing me how to offer grace and being a sister and friend when you need me and when you don’t .
NetGalley shared an ARC copy of this book in exchange for my thoughtful and honest review.

Jessi Hempel's "The Family Outing: A Memoir" is a book likely to resonate deeply with those of us, and I'd dare say the majority of us, who've grown up amidst family dysfunction and in worlds where we've been forced to masks our truths and hide our own identities.

Jessi grew up in what appeared to be an idyllic middle-class home. However, behind the facade she lived with a father who was seldom home due to work and a stay-at-home mother increasingly erratic in her behaviors and her loneliness. In the meantime, Jessi and her two siblings struggled make sense of their family, their bodies, and this world they grew up in.

By the time Jessi entered adulthood, family truths were starting to be revealed. Jessi had come out as gay, Jessi's sister Katje as bisexual, Jessi's brother as transgender, Jessi's father as gay, and Jessi's mother had come forth with truths around trauma experienced early in life with an alleged serial killer.

All within one family.

Yikes.

As almost absurdist as all this sounds, Hempel seemingly realizes she needs to do very little in her writing to bring out the emotional resonance and inherent drama within these stories. Rather than amping up the volume on these experiences, Jessi writes with an almost matter-of-fact quality that simply acknowledges this is the way it was and, as healing unfolded, this is how it is now.

As truths come out, "The Family Outing" becomes an exhilarating experience of a family learning anew how to communicate with one another and learning how to rebuild bridges to one another in ways that liberated and empowered one another and the family as a whole.

What's particularly refreshing with "The Family Outing" is that there isn't some magical moment when suddenly "our family is okay now" arrives. Jessi's journey with her family is an imperfect one filled with stops and starts, regressions and a few steps forward. The book, often referred to as "The Project" by Jessi, is told largely through Jessi's own lens but it's established early on that all family members agreed to participation (Katje with some reservations). We can be grateful that they have, because while these specific circumstances may be unique there's little denying that anyone who's experienced family dysfunction will find a myriad of ways to connect with Jessi and her family.

"The Family Outing" is emotionally honest, often funny, insightful, and vulnerable in a fairly matter-of-fact sort of way. There's little in the way of emotional manipulation here, though one can easily see this being turned into a really awful movie because the layers are so complex and practically beg for a picture-perfect Wes Anderson interpretation.

There were times when "The Family Outing" meandered a bit more than I'd have liked. For example, an extended section where Jessi joins what comes off as a sort of self-empowerment cult is interesting but feels somewhat out of place. It then pops up periodically as Jessi had gotten her sister involved and the sister lingered in it a bit longer before it's suddenly announced, basically in one line, that Katje was no longer with it.

There were also times when the seemed almost too focused externally, or outside the family, and in these times I found the memoir shifted tonally in ways that lost my attention. Fortunately, this was a relatively minor concern but it still impacted me enough that I started to consider these moments "perfect stopping points" within the book.

Overall, however, "The Family Outing" is a mesmerizing memoir that falls within the "too strange to be true" category but, of course, it is actually true or, at least, true according to Jessi's perception of these experiences. For those who've ever felt like taking off the mask was nearly impossible, "The Family Outing" is an affirmation that it's nearly always possible to claim one's truths and survive and even thrive through it all. While families certainly do not always heal, "The Family Outing" is a reminder that even the hope for healing is often grounded in a willingness to show up "as is."

Fiercely compelling and frequently quite funny, "The Family Outing" invites us to be our authentic selves and challenges us to extend that invitation to others.

This book really struck a chord with me. After experiencing several “outings” in my own family, it’s refreshing to read another’s experience. While our experiences aren’t the same, it’s incredibly helpful to have a full range of perspective. Definitely recommend.

I really enjoyed “the project” and found the storytelling a bit different than your typical memoir. I appreciated the deep love and respect that the author carried for her family despite truly tough times. It was really inspiring to read this book and would recommend it to others; especially the queer folks in my life.

advance reader copy from netgalley, and just adding that this was extra weird bc one of the people profiled in it is a friend. but have you ever read a book and been like, wow, if this were written after like another 18 months of therapy it would be really good? it felt a little bit too unprocessed and sometimes hard to follow, and sometimes sort of boring, but overall i got through it and felt okay about it!

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me review this book.
It’s interesting growing up, we see the world differently yet sometimes things that happen seem normal to us yet aren’t. This books tells about the ups and downs of the author’s family and how they all came out at different times. Sometimes you have to lose yourself and get lost to find yourself.

I really enjoyed getting to “meet” the different members of the Hempel family. There was so much pain embedded into the fabric of their family and it was fascinating seeing the way that they each dealt with it and moved forward with their lives. In today’s times of Instagram highlight reels, it was refreshing to see a family that owned their dysfunction instead of putting on a fake smile and pretending everything was perfect. Searching for your authentic self takes a lot of work and I applaud this family for doing that. Thank you to #netgalley for this ARC of #thefamilyouting

Incredible memoir that reflected on personal experiences and truly reflected the culture of the time period. As a communication studies scholar, I enjoyed the ways in which family communication was depicted and discussed throughout this book.

This is a fantastic memoir and a tribute to the trials and tribulations of the LGBT community. I loved reading this, and have already put it on the radar of my bookish friends!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of “The Family Outing” in exchange for an honest review. What a fantastic book. I imagine that this was quite and exhausting and exhaustive undertaking on Hempel’s (and her family’s) behalf. This memoir weaves together generations of a family—and most in depth, Hempel’s immediate family. She weaves throughout the past and the present while clearly articulating her hopes for the future. This was beautifully written. Really well done. It was an honor to read. Thank you to Hempel’s for having the fortitude to write this and her family for the courage to be written about.

This was a book I didn't know I needed. The complexity of a family is constructed well, and so beautifully interwoven together. The author's perspective in coming out- the what, the how, the why, took my breath away at points, and I found myself putting down the text to digest and breathe. The use of story through each family member provided the reader with material to care about each person, while understanding their faults and increasing great empathy, not only for what they went through but how we need to hold all of the pieces of a person, and not just get stuck on how their own life impacts ours.

Loved this memoir from the start!! I liked how the author curated scenes from her life that depicted how she felt at certain moments. The scenes were interesting, engaging, and fun to read. A lot about this book resonated with me -- how the author navigated relationships, learned what it means to be and feel lovable, and to grow through the obstacles. I haven't read a memoir that involved the other "characters" in the research and telling of the story, so this was cool to see. Very well-written.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ebook in exchange for an honest review.

This was beautiful. Reflective and thoughtful story about healing. Jessi was very responsible in the telling of her family members' stories, using a mix of interviews with them and her own memories to tell the story of her whole family. It was quite remarkable that a family could have so many secrets and come through it so well.

This is a fun, sprawling family story, with twists and turns and swerves and a real clarity of purpose. The narrative voice is sharp and incisive, and the story vivid and important.

This memoir engaged me as a reader right away. A sad, angry family, disconnected from each other, tries to figure out why this is. They all are leading lives that don't feel authentic. But they do, because each person feels they signed up for them.

This is the exploration of a family coming to terms with who they each, individually, are.

Really involving book. Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC.