Saachi Koul's ability for self-reflection, brutal honesty, and humor is such a gift to everyone who reads her books. I was a huge fan of her first book and while the subject matter is in complete opposition of her first, that's sort of what's remarkable here. This is a book about grief, the grief of her parent's growing older, of her changing understanding of herself, and most notably her long relationship, the subject matter of her first book, ending.

I think this book is a love letter to looking back with older eyes. I loved it so much.

Scaachi Koul was living the 'plan' for her life: she had gone through trials and family drama to finally marry the person she chose. This book tackles what happens when your happily ever after isn't actually making you happy and you need to figure out a new version of your life.

While I hadn't read the first book of essays, Koul did a good job of summarizing the major themes that were impactful. These essays were soul-baring and found myself riveted by her perspectives and honesty.

Thank you to #netgalley and #stmartinspress for providing me access to a digital copy!

DNF at 57%

I feel like I was missing something while reading this book, or that I was reading a completely different book than everyone else. Many other reviewers wrote that this was hilarious, touching, and relatable. I found it none of those things. I've been through my share of terrible events, as we all have, and I've found the humor in them as a way to cope and work through it. There was nothing humorous about how she wrote about her situations. I'm not sure how talking about her abusive marriage (in which she was very much a part of the problem) and being friends with her assaulter in a scathing, depressing way was supposed to be funny? She constantly talks about fighting, about how her parents fight with each other, how she fights with her parents, how she wants to fight with her ex but he doesn't, how she wants to fight with everyone. This came off more as a very serious issue that she won't deal with at all. In fact, that's how pretty much everything came off as. She has many serious issues that she won't actually deal with, except for trying to fight everyone and be as horrible and hateful as possible. Not for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for gifting me a digital ARC of Scaachi Koul's newest essay collection, Sucker Punch. In exchange I offer my honest review.

I first read and absolutely adored Scaachi’s previous essay collection, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, so I was excited to see that she had another collection of essays coming out. While this new book revisits previous topics, the humor and joy from earlier felt extinguished, and instead we were given a much darker, heavier reading experience. This book focuses heavily on Scaachi’s divorce, the isolation during the pandemic, family bonds, health issues and body acceptance.

Scaachi is a gifted writer. Her honesty, insights and humor definitely shine through but as a whole this book was tinged with more sadness than I expected.
I would easily recommend this book to those who enjoy keen observations, self awareness , gentle reflection and a sense of maturity through growth.

I really liked Scaachi Koul's first book of essays, so I eagerly requested an ARC of this one. I admired her no holds barred approach to topics that make some feel squeamish. She was daring and willing to go there with a brash honesty that I appreciated. Sucker Punch contains the same sharp insight and boldness, yet it is more subtle and intimate. The book has to do with the break up of her marriage, but it also deals with the impact of being an open book. It actually explores a lot of other topics within the larger context of her divorce. And by withholding parts of her experience and maintaining that boundary with the reader, Koul somehow manages to create a greater sense of intimacy. Yes, that sounds counterintuitive, but it works. Structurally, there were parts of the book that felt disjointed, but that may be a reflection of her circumstances. What she went through and continues to go through isn't necessarily a flowy process. Perhaps we were meant to feel that way alongside her.

Scaachi Koul delivers another sharp, biting collection of essays that blend humor, personal insight, and cultural criticism with her signature wit. Sucker Punch is a knockout—funny, unfiltered, and often painfully honest.

If you loved One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, this one should be on your radar. Koul’s voice remains fresh, fearless, and fiercely entertaining.

I love Scaachi's writing so much, and this book was such a welcome return. It's very emotional and raw in comparison to other work that I've read by her, but still has moments that made me snort with laughter. This book had some throughlines - family relationships, fighting, and Hindu mythology specifically - that made it feel like one long essay even more so than a collection of essays, which I thought was super interesting structurally. Will absolutely be recommending this one, though I do think folks should probably read her first book before reading this one for some context.

I really enjoyed Scaachi Koul’s first book, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, when I read it back in 2017. So I was excited to see that she had another collection of essays coming out. She is again tackling topics like romantic relationships, family, race, and body image. It’s interesting to see how her experiences have either changed or not changed with her different stage in life after releasing the first book.

The part of this that I found the most interesting was how she was recontextualizing experiences she wrote about in her first book. Especially when it came to her experience with sexual assault. She explored all the ways she skirted around writing about it in the first book, but now in this collection was able to open up about it. I also really enjoyed reading more about her relationships with her different family members.

While there were parts of this that I appreciated and thought were very impactful, on the whole I didn’t enjoy this one as much as her first book. It’s marketed as being a collection of essays, but for me the individual chapters didn’t exactly feel like their own essays. So it kind of felt like a messy, meandering memoir instead of distinct essays.

I think that people who enjoyed One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter should definitely check this out. It’s interesting to see the evolution of her writing, life, and relationships years down the line.

While these essays were very raw and honest, Scaachi Koul also made me crackle with laughter throughout. She discusses so many intensely personal topics - divorce, family dynamics, racism, fatphobia and eating disorders, sexual assault - in a very thoughtful and nuanced way that is often emotional and hilarious at once. I was tearing up and chucking at the same time the whole way through. I have not read her first book, but I would like to now because she reflects a lot in Sucker Punch on the stories of her life and marriage that she was determinedly telling herself, and the world, at the time and how that reality crumbled around her over the intervening years. I wrote down this quote, which I keep thinking about, "I want joy for other people. Can I start with myself?"

This book had every element that makes me love personal essay collections. It was smart, funny, reflective, and beautifully written. This book is like your most interesting friend telling you about the hard times sh’s gone through.
The essays flow into a perfectly crafted narrative that made me laugh, smile, and also think about how many things I am going to talk about in therapy.

I can’t recommend this book enough! An easy 5 stars!

These essays were powerful, poignant, emotional, funny, and just so damn good. I was hooked from the first essay and did not want to put it down. I haven’t read anything from Koul before; but I will absolutely read more now.

I read Sucker Punch after first reading Scaachi Koul’s debut, and I’m glad I did—it provided useful context, as this book explores the unraveling of a relationship chronicled in her earlier essays.

While the writing is raw and emotionally charged, I had trouble connecting with it. Many of the themes, particularly the struggles of navigating a public breakup and the weight of social media perception, didn’t resonate with me. As an average person without a public platform, I found it difficult to relate to the unique pressures Koul faces.

The millennial woman perspective felt familiar but didn’t offer anything particularly new. That said, if you’re already a fan of Koul’s voice and style, you’ll likely appreciate this collection. For me, as someone without a strong connection to her beforehand, it didn’t leave a lasting impact.

I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Sucker Punch is a frank and authentic exploration of the author's journey through the end of her marriage and subsequent divorce. She doesn't shy away from exploring her own culpability in the relationship and its end while calling out her ex's abusive behaviors and their mutual destructive communication patterns. Koul shows deep insight and brave willingness to explore the many factors relating to this personal tragedy including her upbringing, societal impacts, her own choice of career to make personal issues very public in books and articles.

I felt the author was very hard on herself and found myself wincing at times; while it failed as a collection of humorous essays Sucker Punch succeeded as a raw and vulnerable picture of a strong woman wrestling through a very hard time. I found myself weighed down and emotionally spent for much of the book and feeling guilty for being disappointed I was not enjoying myself; how dare I ask the author to take all this trauma and make it funny? Except that's how it's presented, as hilarious and insightful essays. Perhaps in a couple years, after some therapy and with heavy revisions to add clarity, focus and some emotional distance, that's what these stories could be. Maybe this is what the author needed to say and how she needed to say it, even if it wasn't a fun read for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC.

This wasn't really my cup of tea. The author, by her own admission, loves a fight. The book was tough to read for me.

I read Scaachi Koul's first book when it came out and I remember liking her voice a lot. That said, it didn't really stick with me in the intervening years, so I'd forgotten that so much of it was about her relationship with her now ex-husband. Because of that I had no investment in her marriage whatsoever, so they emotional aspects of this collection related to the dissolution of said marriage just weren't of much interest to me. Koul remains mostly vague about the inner workings of that marriage, focusing mostly on the broad strokes of their break-up (the fighting, the cheating, therapist age difference). The essays I most enjoyed here were those about her relationship with her parents, and particularly her mom. There is a lot of honestly and humor here, and Koul is a compelling writer. Those who have very closely followed her life and career over the years will really enjoy this, but new readers may feel a bit isolated from the subject of most of this book.

I've been a big fan of Scaachi for a long time and this book is such a treat. It's more emotional than I expected, and I loved it.

While I have not read any of Scaachi Koul's previous writings, just the title alone -- Sucker Punch -- drew me in. Koul's essays touch on both the highs and lows and pretty much everything in between as she looks back on her growing up years as well as her marriage and why it failed. Her essays are raw, heartbreaking, funny at times, but always brutally honest.

Growing up in Canada as the daughter of Indian immigrants, Koul has been a verbal fighter all her life. And it's this way of interacting with those around her that seems to be Koul's double-edge sword. Scaachi Koul is a writer who made me think -- and isn't that the goal of all good writers?

A thought-provoking read. Thank you to #NetGalley and #St.MartinsPress for this electronic ARC of #SuckerPunch.

In her new collection of essays, Scaachi Koul writes the hell out of her pain, love, and heartbreak. The essays had a rawness, like she was working her way into understanding who she is, what she wants, and what life is like on the other side of huge, emotional devastation. She's also sharply funny throughout, even when describing sobering events.

Essays here touch on the complex aftermath of rape; hitting the dating/hook-up scene in her early 30s after having been with her ex since she was 20; the love between her and her family--particularly her mother (so touching!); and making sense of how she got her relationship with her ex-husband so wrong.

I remember liking One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, but the details escape me now. This one, though, will stick with me.

I am still thinking about this book a few days after finishing it. Not only the stories that Scaachi Koul tells about her life over the past few years, but the choices she made in structuring and ordering those stories. The way in which she doles out information and writes about herself, rendering herself unlikeable and highly relatable in turns.

As a book, Sucker Punch is quick and readable. Koul is a good writer (one whose work I've always sought out online) and I laughed out loud more than once. She's writing about miserable things - divorce, the pandemic, trauma, family tragedy - but she threads plenty of humor in there, making sure things never get too maudlin. But the book is also brutal in its honesty, raining punches down on both the people in Koul's life and on the writer herself. At times, I wondered if she was judging herself too harshly (probably, because that's what women do) or if she was genuinely as prickly and terrible to be around as she portrayed herself.

And then there's the subject of her divorce. The main thread running through the book. Koul never comes right out and gives a linear account of what happened, but instead drops pieces of information like crumbs, eventually creating an impressionist painting of an explanation. It's an interesting way to consider such a huge life event - in tiny pieces that make the whole thing more manageable. I still find myself pondering the order in which she released the information, at first making it seem like her personality was at fault before slowly revealing structural issues and betrayals that go far beyond just being "not right for each other."

I think I'll be thinking about this book for a long time, and really, doesn't that say it all?

4/5

Scaachi Koul has written a beautiful collection of essays coping with a full spectrum of emotions and circumstances!

Reading these essays feels like listening to your friend process their life over coffee/drinks/dinner, and yes, sometimes you talk about or go over the same issue or experience a few times while you grapple with it. You can tell that this was a very cathartic writing process for her, and I loved that.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for my advance copy!