I can't resist: You didn't hear this from me, but Kelsey McKinney's new book, You Didn't Hear This From Me, is a fascinating look at the role of gossip in culture and community. It isn't a manual for gossip, or full of gossipy stories, but it really does a nice job justifying the reasons why we gossip, what gossip really is and what it means. I learned some things, and I've got a new appreciation for the whisper networks and side conversations that occur.

Thank you to Grand Central Publishing and the author for a free advanced reader copy of this book.

This was researched and presented very well in a way that was engaging and educating at the same time. Reading the first portion of the book, I came to the conclusion that the author was actually just trying to justify that they was talking about people behind their back. But as the book went on, the author brought up many different view points and ideas that I have never thought. The sharing of information is vital for human connection and growth. I enjoyed this, but I think it will take a little more dissecting for me to really understand gossip and its role in our lives.

Thanks to Netgalley and Grand Central Publishing for this advanced copy!

I am a HUGE fan of Normal Gossip and really enjoyed Kelsey McKinney's first novel, God Spare the Girls. Basically, if she wants to talk about gossip, I want to listen. But I wasn't sure what to expect from an entire book about gossip. This book does a great job of talking about what gossip is, what it does, and how we feel about it, all from the lens of someone who clearly LOVES a good story and loves gossip. I particularly loved how she started the book talking about the shame she felt as a kid when she wanted to gossip and how that shame comes from patriarchal structures meant to keep women from talking to women. YES. I also appreciated her discussion of how gossip helps keep people safe from predators and shifty situations.

Unlike other similar books, I never got the sense that McKinney was stretching to fill pages with this book. Each chapter is a slight variation on a theme but doesn't feel repetitive or overdone. She looks at gossip in culture both clearly as a fan but also clearly as someone taking a step back to consider and analyze today's culture. Even though McKinney isn't hosting Normal Gossip (it's fine, we are all fine), she is clearly sticking around to tell stories and I am definitely here to listen.

I’ll remember this book whenever I watch mean girls now.
The writing is clear, conversational, and covers some very interesting stuff. This reminded me of Jon Ronson’s books, which were some of my favorite nonfiction books for a long while.
A parasocial fandom chapter! A deuxmoi chapter! A viral content as surveillance chapter! A reality tv chapter! Like what a treat!

Note: I ended up reading this book mostly on audio.

I was psyched to read You Didn't Hear This From Me as a Normal Gossip and Kelsey McKinney fan. Kelsey narrating the audiobook was definitely a highlight.

In terms of content, I liked some chapters much more than others. The sections that focused on Kesley's personal experiences were particularly strong. I appreciated the messaging that gossip can be positive, though I similar sentiments came through clearly in Normal Gossip.

I struggled a bit with Kelsey's storytelling advice to make gossip more interesting. It's a fair point that gossip often goes through various people and details shift, but I feel weird endorsing the idea that we should make those changes on purpose. For Normal Gossip and piece of this book, Kelsey edited gossip submissions to anonymize them, but I've also read that Normal Gossip has sometimes taken the anonymization so far that it's not even recognizable to the submitter. Still trying to figure out how I feel about this.

Such a delightful nonfiction read! I was hooked by the AI generated gossip lesson, but there were several other points that would've gotten my strewn, too. Kelsey McKinney proves to be a talented writer with this one. You Didn't Hear This From Me is well-written and poignant. I am amazed at the research that went into this publication.

From the history of oral legends to Ephesians 4:29, from Mean Girls to Britney Spears, from politics to the #Metoo movement-- gossip is much more than just snickering teenagers. It is about how we process information about the world around us. Ways we communicate what we see, hear, and think about others. We choose how we disseminate that information, but it is a crucial part of our society.

Thank you Netgalley and pub for this ARC!

You Didn't Hear This From Me is a really fun exploration of gossip, from every angle, from someone who knows the subject all too intimately. It's great to see Kelsey McKinney's voice translate so well to the page.

I love love LOVE gossip. In reality who doesn't? Dont grab this book if you think this is a book giving you the juicy scoop on something, because it isn't that. However, if you're into the history of it then its for you and it is quite interesting.

Loved this blend of memoir and history-of-gossip. McKinney's narrative felt well-researched and also personal. Great for fans of memoir and also fans of popular history!

3.5 Stars

I am a big fan of the podcast Normal Gossip so when I heard Kelsey was writing a book I knew I had to read it!

The book began with a quote from a 90’s Reba McEntire song so I was endeared and excited from the jump. Reba is my queen.

Going into this book I wasn’t sure if it would be super research-heavy or just straight focused on various pieces of anonymized gossip or personal run-ins with gossip for the author. It was somewhere in the middle? I would have liked it better one way or the other.

However, Kelsey’s comedic voice did shine through which carried this through for me.

I do love that through the pod and this book Kelsey is proclaiming that gossip is not inherently bad, and can be used to protect people and that whisper networks have been here and doing good for ages.

I am a long time listener of Kelsey's podcsast, Normal Gossip! Her work has legitimacy changed my life and also made it so much better. I am a bit older than her typical demographic, but I have been a fan from day one.

Beyond that, this work was an UNDERTAKING. The research alone is amazing.

Know, this concept and framework around gossip has completely changed my life. I went from feeling ashamed--to realizing that gossip is a thinly vailed rubric to protect those with the upmost power.

I said what I said. I will say it again. Gossip protects those with limited power. It limits the playing field.

Read this book.

Any negative I have towards this book is quite simply MY OWN FAULT and not a flaw in the book. This book is a really unique deep dive into gossip: its history, its cultural importance, its characteristics. It is a sociological exploration about the human need for gossip and once I realized that's what it was about, I did really enjoy it!!

My problem is that as a superfan of the author's podcast, Normal Gossip, I expected the book to be filled with salacious gossip stories that would make me laugh out loud, just like on the podcast. I am not the biggest nonfiction reader, so I found some parts to be a little boring, but I'm really glad I stuck with it. So if you're a Normal Gossip fan hoping for something in the same vein, just be prepared...BUT I do encourage you to pick it up anyway because it's so interesting and provides a contextual framework for gossip. And of course the voice of the author comes through in a hilarious way the whole time. I'll continue to follow Kelsey McKinney anywhere!

Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!!

I love gossip. I love the podcast Kelsey McKinney created all about gossip. And I so wanted to love this book. It’s very well-done, thoroughly researched, thoughtful, and informative—you can certainly see Kelsey’s journalism background throughout (and that’s great!!). But I didn’t love this book. It will be a fantastic read for the right person, but I went into it with expectations of something a little more “hey, let me tell you a secret about gossip in society” and a little less academic.

Finished Reading

Pre-Read notes

Gossip sort of fascinates me. Right now the issue of gossip is creating giant divisions in my biological family. We can't agree what gossip even is, let alone how to handle it as a family. I take the unpopular opinion that gossip happens naturally in families, as in, "How's Uncle Hank doing? How is Gramma's cancer battle going? How's my sister's new job going?" This is not gossip to me, but it is for people who are preoccupied with what is being said about them. I learned a long time ago not to pay any attention to what people say about me. I'm mentally ill, so people are mostly wrong about me anyway.

I hope I gain some clarity from reading this book, despite its humor. *edit The humor added a lot to this emotionally fraught discussion for me!

Final Review:

“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.” p152

Review summary and recommendations

This is one of those nonfiction book where the author's interest in her subject really shines through. Kelsey McKinney discusses her seemingly humble topic, gossip, from a number of insightful and surprising angles. I came to this book while experiencing a "gossip" issue in my life and came away with a deeper understanding of gossip and its role in human survival. I loved reading this book and learning to better understand this socially and morally charged topic.

I recommend this one for readers who are interested in learning more about gossip and the role it plays in different areas of human life, and fans of humor, memoir, and general nonfiction.

Reality exists without us, which is a comforting reminder. p142

Reading Notes

Three (or more) things I loved:

1. At its most basic, gossip is just one person talking to another about someone who isn’t present. That means, definitionally, that prayer requests are gossip. So much yes to this. It's easy to vilify gossip as women's talk or unChristian, but doing so holds gossip in a shortsighted perspective.

2. Well, McKinney just convinced me to read The Epic of Gilgamesh by sharing a gossip-style variation she received from ChatGPT. Also, I recommend this book to any writers who are nervous about AI stealing writing away from humans.

3. A meta-analysis published in Social Psychological and Personality Science in 2019 found that people spend approximately fifty-two minutes a day on average gossiping. (The study included only verbal gossiping, so it’s safe to say that fifty-two minutes a day is a low estimate . We are always texting now.) Most of those fifty-two minutes were gossip only in the strictest sense: talking about other people . Only 15 percent of the instances in which participants were gossiping was negative. p39 Gossip is normal.

4. I began to notice that these blanket renunciations of gossip as “negative” never defined who exactly the negativity was directed toward . Negativity is a value judgment. p45 The judgment of "negative" is meaningless when describing two-sided social .

5. In English, the word gossip”comes from the word “god-sibb,” a word used as early as the eleventh century to denote a person with whom you were emotionally intimate but not related. p53 As I speculated before I started this book, it seems gossip comes naturally in families.

6. Recording people in public as individuals does not create the exact same panopticon that the state generates by wiretapping or privacy invasion , but it does make the state’s ability to monitor us even easier. We have created our own surveillance state willingly, and we applaud ourselves for doing so. p123 We need to ask the hard questions about the kinds of gossip that are most powerful and potentially destructive.

7. [G]ossip is how we decide whom to trust and whom not to trust. It helps us decide who is safe and who is not, who will protect us and who won’t. Gossip is how we build our communities, and watching people build (and destroy) communities on television is still social learning. p129 Gossip actually serves an important social function. This is the reason I refused to "stop gossiping" within my family, because the members are abusive, and I feel a deep need to protect myself from them. Abusers in small systems have a lot of power, but one of the greatest sources is in the silence of their victims.

Rating: 🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣 /5 people talking
Recommend? yes
Finished: Jan 30 '25
Format: accessible digital arc, NetGalley
Read this book if you like:
📜 nonfiction
👥️ social commentary
😂 humor
🕰 history

Thank you to the author Kelsey McKinney, publishers Grand Central Publishing, and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of YOU DIDN'T HEAR THIS FROM ME. All views are mine.
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This book was not a good match for me and it is entirely my fault. I love the Normal Gossip podcast so when I saw the host had a book coming out with a gossipy title - I made up for myself that it would be like the podcast but in print. I got in bed with the book ready to read some great gossip stories and moments of “what would you do?” and laugh myself to sleep. However that’s not what the book is about and not what the book claims to be about - it is just what I made up. This book is a study of gossip and what purpose it serves and how it’s more nuanced than just fun or bad. Lots of interesting information there but a big disconnect from what I expected so it wasn’t working for me. Thank you to the publisher for the free ebook and audiobook to review.

This non-fiction book is one part memoir, one part pop culture references of the past decade, and one part gossip through history. There were some highs and lows, and it was a quick read.

Each chapter has a different theme, and some chapters I felt were much stronger than others. The memoir parts were most compelling to me because Kelsey's voice and opinion shine through with some interesting points. The pop culture references and anecdotes I fear will be a little dated five years from now (e.g. West Elm Caleb), and I just don't know enough of Kelsey's favorite reality TV (e.g. The Bachelorette, The Traitors, Survivor, and Real Housewives) to appreciate those references. The history portion I think is the weakest because it's overly quote heavy and feels more like a paper for school than Kelsey's take or a new perspective. It also didn't feel like there was a strong thread to tie together all of the chapters; I could definitely have read these chapters out of order with minimal difference.

For full transparency, I listened to and liked the first few seasons of Normal Gossip, so Kelsey Mckinney's voice felt familiar and endearing from the first page. I think actually the audiobook narrated by Kelsey will be the optimal experience for this book, because I could guess which words Kelsey would stress or how she'd land lines but it would have been more fun to hear as told by her. If you enjoy Kelsey's podcast, I think you'll be entertained and enjoy learning more about Kelsey, but you shouldn't expect juicy gossip or a controversial take on gossip.

Thank you, Grand Central Publishing, for an advanced reader copy!

You Didn't Hear This From Me is a thought-provoking collection of essays on gossip. There's no ultimate judgement on whether it's good or bad, worthwhile or destructive--it all depends on the context! If you're a Normal Gossip fan looking for more juicy stories, you won't really find them here. Rather, this book will have you examining your own relationship with gossip, eavesdropping, reality tv, celebrity culture...

Hell yess! Normal Gossip is my all-time favorite podcast and while I was sad to see Kelsey sign off as the host, this book more than makes up for it. (For now). The history of how gossip came to be is fascinating and she writes it in a way that doesn’t feel like a textbook. The pop culture references and personal stories are perfect tie ins to helping the reader connect the dots. Read it!

"You Didn't Hear This From Me" feels like reading a super long college essay whose thesis is “gossip is good, actually“

Kelsey McKinney's full length book about gossip was a fun, engaging and thoughtful read. I most appreciated her discussion of the role of gossip in human culture and identity as well as the evolutionary advantages of the practice. When she delved into current examinations of gossip she referred quite a bit to pop media and reality TV. I understood why she chose these sources as they are widely known and therefore weren't divulging any intimate secrets but I don't personally have any interest in that world so those sections fell flat for me. A valid question would be whether this book illuminated new understandings. I would say it does to some extent. Fans of the podcast would certainly enjoy this book, as would reality TV lovers. Anyone who felt maligned in social circles due to their interest in the stories of those around them could feel reassured that this is all part of community bonding as long as certain privacy lines are respected of course.