I wouldn't call myself a "Beth" but I am a fan of Kate's Podcast, Be There In Five and this book was even better. Same vibe and truly the perfect deep dive on what it was like as a tween/ teen for millennials. I am a few years older than Kate, which in the 90's / early 2000's can make a huge difference in experiences, not to mention where you are up, economical standing etc. If you also identify as an elder millennial and love all things pop culture and nostalgia, then this book is for you.

p.s. grab a tissue for the life update at the end. I hadn't kept with with Kate in recent years so I was finding out in real time the news that life. update she shared and it brought me to tears and filled me with so much joy.

I was initially drawn to this for the cover. I knew nothing about the author or the plot. To my delight, the story did not disappoint. It evoked a sense of being right back in my teenage years filled with nostalgia!

I wasn't aware of Kate Kennedy or her podcast, but the cover of her book spoke to me--as a fellow Millennial. Part memoir, part Millennial trip down memory lane, Kennedy addresses what it was like to grown up as a Millennial. The pop culture references that were "you had to be there" moments, to addressing issues that us Millennials had to grown through and didn't realize the effect of until we were old enough to reflect on much later in life to see how growing up in that age affected us as people. Kennedy has gained a new fan!

This book had been on my TBR since the cover was released, even though I had never listened to the author's podcast. I loved the title and the cover and as a pop culture loving millennial, I knew I wanted to read it.

I thought this would be a light lookback on the pop culture I grew up loving, but it was so much more. There were light and fluffy chapters, but it was also empowering, feminist and relatable. The author narrates the audiobook, and hearing her emotion throughout the book really sold this on audio for me.

While it does delve deep into millennial culture, it's also deeply personal to Kate so it reads as nonfiction and a memoir in one. I loved the pop culture references throughout that really brought me back to my childhood and college days (hello statement tops and chunky necklaces). She really brings to light how it's been frowned upon to like "girly" things, but empowers you to just like the things you like no matter what anyone else thinks. Some chapters were a little repetitive, but Kate as the narrator really kept me engaged, and I'll definitely be checking out her podcast after listening to her book.

Huge thank you to MacMillen Audio and NetGalley for the audio ARC!

I read this book in e-book form, and as soon as it came out to be requested in audiobook format, I wanted to hear it again. And I am not only convinced that this author is my new best friend, but she has the LEAST annoying voice ever. She is a true pleasure to listen to as she recounts her own childhood and adolescence, complete with giggles and sighs and things you just don't get in the printed version,.

I enjoyed listening to this! Not something I think those outside of the millennial age group would relate to but I enjoyed the nostalgic experience.

Little did I know when I started this book- the author and I are the same age and grew up in the same city. For a book that talks about millennial childhood nostalgia, this was perfect as so many of her stories really resonated with my own personal experiences.

I love 90s/00s pop culture and it was prevalent throughout this book. It’s not all American Girl Dolls and TGIF though- there are some darker stories, especially in her college years, which I also found relatable.

She’s a clever writer using wordplay throughout, which worked especially well on audio. You can also hear her voice breaking in some of the more emotional stories- this authenticity was very refreshing.

I really enjoyed the nostalgia of this book and I look forward to listening to the author’s podcast in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley, Kate Kennedy and St Martins Press for the audio ARC.

This biting, funny and punny collection of essays made me laugh out loud and choke up. These essays are personal but they do not make a straight-up memoir. This book is an ode to millennial, specifically, but more generally, all girlhood and womanhood. Kennedy makes her observations relatable, but it’s also smart and inclusive. It’s feminist as hell and refreshingly self-aware. Overall, like the author says, this is an observation of pop culture and how it relates to women’s issues. Highly recommend to millennial women for all the references and ways to relate to the author’s experiences, but funny and smart and worth it for anyone!

I’m hesitant to call anyone the voice of a generation, but Kate Kennedy is absolutely one of the defining voices of the Millennial generation. In our current era of millennial nostalgia, a book examining peak Millennial cultural touchstones could easily come off as pandering or trite. But OIAM is anything but. Kennedy takes a careful look at the near universal experiences of women of a certain age, a fresh and sobering reminder that our cringiest behaviors were also ones practiced by many of the women and girls around us. This book feels like community and friendship. Kennedy makes you feel seen, heard and understood, as embarrassing as these memories may be. You’ll find yourself gasping because she remembers things you had either completely forgotten existed or blacked out from the sheer cringe of it all. My experience reading this book felt like a novel length version of the quote Taylor Swift shared in her TIME person of the year interview: don’t kill the part of you that’s cringe, kill the part of you that cringes.

There were some great references that brought me back to my childhood. But ultimately, it was too wordy and I skipped around through some of the book. It was still fun for the memories it brought up! The narrator was good but not my favorite for this kind of book.
Thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

✨ Review ✨ One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In by Kate Kennedy; Narrated by author.

Wow was this a wild ride through millennial girl zeitgeist {a word I'm never actually sure I'm using correctly}. I laughed, I cried, I felt all the things about the ways I grew up and the joys it brought and the baggage that it made me carry.

From reflecting on the links between girl power and consumption, the weird ways that we grew up as the first generation curating our digital image at a very young age, "going out out," creating AIM screen names, and so so so many other things.

Things that resonated deeply included the following:
-how in the name of girl power we were taught to shop and buy, patterns that we continue to today with consumption in the name of self care
-how we grew up embarrassed to talk about things we liked, hiding or apologizing for them if they didn't seem on trend
-growing up not talking about our mental state or inner mind in ways that made us all feel abnormal, not realizing how normal that all is
-growing up feeling the "love, marriage, baby carriage" trajectory and feeling off if we didn't follow these steps as neatly as we were told we should
-our relationship to songs and pop culture and how we thought love should be

With all that said, I think that {even with the author's caveats} this speaks to a specific experience of white hetsis girlhood and early adulthood, as well as to a particular range of upper working class through middle class experience. It hit home for me, because of the ways that this was similar to my experience but I can see where it's problematic to label this as THE zeitgeist or THE identity of millennial women. Again, the author frequently acknowledges there are limits to this experience she shares, but it still felt a little prescriptive in the end.

The author's narration of this book was terrific, and her emotion rings clear throughout. Overall, this was bingeworthy for me and I wished I had a physical copy to highlight it all up.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️(4.25 stars)
Genre: non-fiction, memoir /essays; pop culture
Pub Date: 23 Jan 2024

Read this if you like:
⭕️ 90s pop culture / millennial girldom
⭕️ memoir via essays
⭕️ interrogating your past and the baggage it brought to your future

Thanks to Macmillan Audio and #netgalley for the gifted advanced copy/ies of this book!

Title and Author: One in a Millennial by Kate Kennedy
Overall Grade: B
Narration: B (its very breathy and sounds like she is running which made me feel on edge)
Depth and Topics covered: B
Writing: A- (The poems were the better part)
Best Aspect: I am not a millennial but there was still nostalgia in some of her memories. Such as TV shows and consumer goods. I am glad she spoke of very relevant female topics that need to be discussed more.
Worst Aspect: This is a memoir so don’t listen when she says it isn’t. And she seems annoyed that she was swayed by society yet here she is marketing a book with her opinion that may sway others. So, what I saw as a pick of a hypocrite did bother me.

4.5/5

this book had been on my list for a while, and it didn't disappoint! kate kennedy managed to perfectly express several of the concepts that i've struggled to. it was great to have her read the audiobook because it added an extra layer of emotion - especially in later chapters. footnotes can always be hit or miss in audiobooks, but i felt like they did a great job keeping them separated without distracting too much from the main text. there were a few moments that felt long-winded and i sometimes found myself a bit tired and distracted by the repeated song lyric references, but overall i really enjoyed the trip down memory lane!

As a long time fan of the Be There in Five podcast by the great Kate Kennedy , this book has been on preorder for six months. On Friday, I was approved for the audio book on @netgalley . It’s narrated by Kate, and frequent pod listeners will know that is a delight.

This is GOOD! If you are a woman between 45 and 32ish, I think you will glean a lot. I am specifically a year older than true millennial status, but there was so much in this that was just beautiful!

From American Girl dolls, to youth group culture (True Love Waits 😭😭 coming for you!), AIM culture, and being the forefathers/forewomen (?) creating a personal brand, this collection of essays is a balm to the millennial soul.

Kate Kennedy, thank you! Love your work and so appreciative of the deep dives in minutia that I find important! 💖💖

Thank you St Martin's Press and Netgalley for the review copy!

4.5 stars, more accurately. But I gave it the 5 because I feel heard. Seriously. There are so many accurate depictions of being a millennial in this book that I could connect with. We were gifted both the blessing and the curse of growing up with so many societal shifts. I honestly failed to recognize how formative these things have been. This is a must-read for the mall junkie, Teen magazine reading, AIM using, CD collecting 30/early 40-somethings out there! We are unique and we are finally…maybe…figuring it out.

Thank you to NetGalley, St Martin’s Press, Macmillan Audio, and author Kate Kennedy for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to the publisher for my copy! All thoughts are my own.

There is nothing more exciting to me than seeing the continued success of people I admire. I have been a fan of Kate Kennedy and the Be There in Five Podcast for the longest time. She helped get me through many sunday chores and mental health walks during the pandemic. I was thrilled to see her get a book deal and I’m even happier now that I’ve read the book. It is masterful. Even though I am on the end of the millennial spectrum (1992/1993 babies, where are you?) I still could relate to so much of what Kate wrote about. I was a little too young for the Spice Girls but I was very much an American Girl girlie. There was so much I could relate to and so much I learned, amidst Kate’s signature clever and thoughtful dialogue.

Synopsis:

“One In a Millennial is an exploration of pop culture, nostalgia, the millennial zeitgeist, and the life lessons learned (for better and for worse) from coming of age as a member of a much-maligned generation.Kate is a pop culture commentator and host of the popular millennial-focused podcast Be There in Five. Part-funny, part-serious, Kate navigates the complicated nature of celebrating and criticizing the culture that shaped her as a woman, while arguing that great depths can come from surface-level interests.With her trademark style and vulnerability, One In a Millennial is sharp, hilarious, and heartwarming all at once. She tackles AOL Instant Messenger, purity culture, American Girl Dolls, going out tops, Spice Girl feminism, her feelings about millennial motherhood, and more. Kate’s laugh-out-loud asides and keen observations will have you nodding your head and maybe even tearing up.” —NetGalley

What I Liked:

The Essay Structure: I love how Kate structured this book. It’s an essay collection instead of a tradition memoir, but it still has a memoir feel while staying fresh and fun.

The Writing: I was constantly surprised by how clever the writing was. I shouldn’t be, since Kate’s podcasting has always been quippy and brilliant, but seeing it all in written form was even more more exciting.

The Feelings it Evoked—In the audiobook, Kate opens up in such a beautiful, vulnerable way. I was moved by the emotion in her voice numerous times.

What Didn’t Work:

Nothing! I really thought this was such a well thought out, emotional, funny, relevant book.

Character Authenticity: N/A Spice Rating: N/A Overall Rating: 5/5

Content Warnings:

Infertility, pregnancy loss, ectopic pregnancy, mass shooting, mental health

"The devil works hard, but capitalism works harder." If Britney's autobiography is what the patriarchy, capitalism, and culture of the 90s and early 2000s did to the biggest pop star, this is the story of what they did to all the rest of us just trying to fit in and also be uniquely ourselves. It made me feel so seen and inspired both nostalgia and rage...do you guys remember the game Girl Talk!? I owned it, but forgot about, and WTF was the world thinking!?

I will say this book was also very well timed for me. Over the past two years I've realized that getting older is actually not the tragedy we were raised to believe. I spent so much of my life being so insecure and caring so much about boys liking me and girls thinking I'm cool and am now realizing that maybe it was all bullshit! If loving Taylor Swift makes me basic, I'm fine with that, because I'd rather choose to find joy in the things that bring me joy.

I do think I enjoyed this as an audiobook more than I would have enjoyed it as a text, but either way, it was a delight and provided a lot of reflection on an experience that was largely collective even if it often felt very isolating and individual.

Trigger warning: Infertility

Thanks to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for the ARC.

I’ve gotta be transparent: I’m not a millennial. I’m definitely a Gen Xer, to my core. But when I heard about Kate Kennedy’s book, I knew I wanted to give it a listen (I received the audiobook from NetGalley). I listen to a lot of “Terrible Thanks for Asking” and its host, Nora McInerny, had talked about Kate and Kate’s podcast more than once. I love pop culture and this book was a delightful trip back in time - with enough commonalities - Light as a feather, stiff as a board… getting credit cards at football games (what on earth were we thinking?!)… Saved by the Bell… and so much more. It was a fun little trip in a time machine , even for this non millennial.

I listened to “One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In” by Kate Kennedy as an audiobook, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! It is a collection of essays narrated by the author which covered a host of topics, including: the role of the Internet in her growing up; the 2008 Recession; diet culture; purity culture; the role of tabloid media in the mid-2000s; infertility/millennial motherhood; and so much more.

Many listeners may be familiar with Kennedy's podcast "See You in Five", but I was not familiar with it prior to listening to this audiobook.

What worked for me: I love when an author narrates their own work; she was able to voice the cadence with which the words were intended to be spoken, which is always impactful. The essays had a good mix of nostalgia/fun and heavy-hitting topics. I loved her discussions about the role of religion in her childhood/adolescence (mostly because I, too, grew up in a community where religious homogeneity was the only thing I knew). Her discussions of purity culture and diet culture were spot-on for me. She captured the desire that a young girl has to fit in and the various struggles we all face with bullies or boys that may have been harsh during elementary/middle school. She was very honest with her struggles during early adulthood, particularly as it related to alcohol consumption and social anxiety. Those parts truly resonated with me. The author certainly has a critical eye for the various contradictions that are part of growing up as a millennial. She offered many insightful critiques regarding female friendships and how feminism shows itself in the millennial zeitgeist. I loved her plays on words and her mention of various pop culture references from the 1990s and 2000s. Because what millennial doesn’t love to remember Blockbuster, American Girl dolls, boy bands, and ‘90s sitcoms?

What did not work for me: I did not care for the poetry that was peppered throughout the book. Perhaps it was because I was listening (rather than reading), but I found myself excited for when those parts were completed. They were too cutesy for me, and compared to the author’s prose (which was excellent), the poetry just seemed to fall flat for me. There were moments when it sounded like the author was speaking very quickly and almost out of breath… I wonder if those portions would have benefited from a re-record.

There are discussions of infertility/ectopic pregnancy/pregnancy struggles, so it may be prudent to skip over those parts for listeners who are sensitive to those topics. The narrator openly breaks down reading these sections, so I had to skip over and revisit those portions myself because that section caught me during a particularly weepy time.

Overall, I’d give this listen somewhere around 3.5 stars. I’d recommend it to other millennials who want a nostalgic trip down memory lane with a healthy dose of cultural criticism.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Macmillian Audio for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook for free in exchange for an honest review!

Pull out that Lisa Frank folder; grab that Five Star notebook and your beloved gel pens; pop your favorite movie in the VHS player; and revisit the things that shaped the millennial generation with Kate Kennedy.

In One in a Millennial, Kennedy takes us on a witty, nostalgic, thoughtful, open, insightful, and thought-provoking journey through the experience of growing up and being an adult as a female of the millennial generation. One moment I was laughing out loud and the next I was thinking, “Huh, she’s right about that.” While my lived experience doesn’t match up exactly line for line with hers, I was able to relate to her experiences and identify with her journey and meditations on “the existential questions of womanhood”.

The author serves as the narrator of the audiobook. This isn’t the polished performance you would expect from an actor or professional narrator. Once she hits her stride, this feels more like a conversation with an open friend. You can hear when she gets on a roll and doesn’t stop as much to breathe. You can hear the genuine emotion in the heavier and more wistful moments. While it isn’t flawless, it is genuine.

Note: Although I tend to speed up audiobooks because my mind processes them better at higher speeds, I listened to this one at 1.25x.

I received an advance copy of the audiobook from Macmillan Audio and NetGalley, all review opinions are my own.