I'm a simple woman - I see something written by Rax King, I read it. Her essays are funny, honest, and accessible. Her writing style is so easy to connect with, you find yourself getting exactly where she's coming from and you just want to keep reading more.

3.5 ⭐️
My first Rax King read and likely not my last. Sloppy offers a lot of funny wisdom on sobriety, growing up on the internet, complicated relationships, etc. with a charming wit! I will say that as an essay collection I was way more partial to some than others. Audiobook is also read by the author adding an extra personal layer to the essays. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the e-ARC!

RAX IS THE BEST. Everything Rax King writes, every thing Rax King touches, resonates with a fierce truth, honesty, and absolute wit that's sometimes gross but absolutely never wrong or off-point.

Reading Rax's essays feels like getting coffee with your funniest friend who always has a crazy new story to share. She perfectly balances humor and heaviness, whether she's writing about shoplifting from Brandy Melville or cyberbullying strangers on the wild west of the Neopets forum. Her prose is sharp, witty, and laugh out loud funny, while still being approachable and down to earth in the best way.

Every time I read something by Rax King I walk away thinking that I have almost nothing in common with her, yet that I think I would really like her if we met.

This is a far more personal collection than Tacky, and focuses more on King telling her life story than pop cultural interests. I think I preferred Tacky content-wise, but they’re both intriguing reads.

I am not wild about mental health and addiction memoirs and there is a LOT of that here. But there’s something about getting to experience King’s thoughts and writing that makes me willing to engage with this despite having generally a very low tolerance for it.

King’s sense of humor and honesty help a lot with that, and of course those are part of what makes the rest of the content so fun and thought-provoking. Philosophically and in practice, King and I just come from very different places (though I do agree that wasting money is GREAT fun), but I love getting different perspectives from my own when reading as long as the writing is good, and with King it’s always excellent.

4.5 Stars

This is the first work of Rax King that I have read, and I think I’m going to have to add her in my list of authors I need to read more of!! I usually don’t really love personal essays but King’s weaving of stories was excellent in my opinion. Not necessarily in chronological order, but the last essay really tied everything together.

The self reflections King has done over the years, between her addiction and family issues, were incredibly raw and emotional. I had an enjoyable time with this book, especially since the author is from DC and I recognized a lot of the local spots she mentioned.

Thank you to Vintage and Penguin Randomhouse for the early access.

I loved Rax King's previous collection, Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer, and I couldn't wait to get my grubby little mitts on Sloppy. In this collection, King plunges into memoir-in-essays rather than odes to the great and terrible. Well, maybe memoir-cum-odes to the great and terrible. Real ones know it's okay to not regret, even if you know the choice you made may not have been your best.

Sloppy isn't perfectly linear and doesn't account for King's entire timeline. Instead, it sloshes through her life in vignettes focused on some of her sloppier experiences, like her past drug use, complicated relationship with her late father, and learning to be sober when there's still a little bit of that dirtbag gal in your heart. She also delves into her abusive first marriage, ongoing depression, and suicidal ideations, so be sure to read with caution if these topics are especially difficult for you.

There's no overwhelming sense of regret or deep longing for her more chaotic days. King also writes of her much happier and healthier current marriage, finding a new kind of ease as a homebody, and learning how to stop and appreciate little moments in her life. That being said, don't mistake this as an uplifting airport book pushing you to your new serenity. King writes with the candor of someone who grew up online and the sharp, dark wit of someone who continued to stay Too Online (complimentary). As a collection, Sloppy is frank, conversational, and wildly funny. It's extremely fun to read—even the extra sloppy parts.

Personal favorite essays for me were "Your Pet Is Dying: An Online Life" (Neopets and That One Toxic Online Friendship, iykyk), "Shoplifting from Brandy Melville" (they deserve it), and "Some Notes Towards a Theory of an Old Dad" (something that does not require you to necessarily be old nor a dad to be).

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the arc.

In this essay collection, King takes us on a wild journey through experiences that shaped her, from alcoholic parents, to the awkwardness of dating and sexuality as a teen, to leaving an abusive relationship. She tackles serious topics with humor and self awareness that gives the subject matter the recognition it deserves without feeling too heavy.

This was my first intro to King but now has me eager to check out more of her writing.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

Sloppy is a sharp, funny, and emotionally resonant collection that again proves why Rax King is among the most fearless essayists today. With her signature mix of biting wit and gut-punch honesty, King turns her lens inward to examine addiction, impulsivity, and the messy habits that shape a life—not with judgment, but with radical empathy.

What makes these essays so magnetic is how seamlessly they move between the hilarious and the heartbreaking. There’s no performative shame here—just an honest reckoning with the awkward, impulsive, and sometimes ugly parts of being human.

King’s writing is incisive and effortlessly readable. Whether she’s recounting her Neopets forum obsession, reflecting on her rage issues, or dissecting her codependent friendships, she does so with emotional clarity and a voice that’s both razor-sharp and unmistakably warm.

This isn’t just a collection about bad behavior—it’s about the ache of becoming, the push-pull of self-destruction and self-betterment, and how growth often looks less like a clean arc and more like chaos in slow motion.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Big thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor Books and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of Rax King’s new collection of essays titled Sloppy Or: Doing It All Wrong. I haven’t read Tacky yet, King’s first collection of essays, but it’s on my to read list with its focus on pop culture as art. Sloppy also features some elements of pop culture, but is also incredibly personal and intimate. I was not only surprised by the candor and risks that some of these essays take but also moved and touched by King’s reflection on her past experiences, both good and bad, that brought her to sobriety and a reckoning of sorts with her father’s declining health and eventual death. Not all of the essays are deeply personal, but I found that those essays that focused on King’s own struggles with addiction, mental health, and her relationship with her parents were my favorites in this collection. For me, part of this was her ability to fearlessly reflect on her own mistakes, but also to look back on them with humor and acceptance, and not with regret or shame. This kind of perspective is important to keep in mind, and it leads to some important insights for King. I also think that having experienced similar situations with addiction, recovery, and caring for ailing parents, I felt like there was a lot I could relate to in her experiences, and reading about her perspective was relatable, but also fresh in many ways. King doesn’t seek out pity but rather looks to find meaning and strength in these experiences, often through humor and self-deprecation.
What stood out most to me was King’s own unique voice, of which humor definitely plays a part. Her essay “Proud Alcoholic Stock” relates to her experiences growing up with parents in recovery, and her struggles to understand her own relationship with alcohol and other substances. She discusses her parents’ relationship and their inability to relax in social situations where alcohol was present. As she notes, “Alcoholism is often genetic, which they knew, but as it turns out, so is obsessing about one’s alcoholism.” As someone who grew up in an alcoholic home, I agree that when these realizations occur, that obsession about alcoholism takes on strange perspectives and meanings. King goes on to discuss her observations of other parents who can drink normally and her own experiences with trying alcohol for the first time. I actually wondered if this essay was possibly part of her recovery, as she notes how her relationship with alcohol began and changed over time, eventually leading to her early experiences with sobriety, and how it also changed her relationships with others. She also discusses her father’s other addictions, particularly to tobacco, and how this led to his death. In the essay “Cough-Cough”, King discusses her father’s gradually worsening health and death in the hospital, and how cigarettes brought about this condition. Other essays like “Pants on Fire” and “Anger Management” deal with King’s father’s lying and his explosive temper, remnants of his addict life that never seemed to resolve themselves. “Anger Management” in particular struck a chord with me, as King details sharing burgers and shakes with her father when she was younger, yet the diners were never really able to get her father’s shake exactly right. She relates her own temper to her father’s, and how her ex-husband often liked to provoke her into anger, with one particular disturbing anecdote involving a pellet gun. Yet, it seems like sobriety and the divorce from her ex-husband has enabled King to take a new perspective and work towards avoiding “the life of a lonely volcano, punking magma on myself while the villagers flee” where her “rage is still there—less explosive, still corrosive.” I appreciated this since we don’t always see how these horrible experiences provide us with these useful insights and awareness. She finishes this essay about an instance caring for her father as he’s dying in the hospital, an experience that will cause all kinds of chaos and unanticipated emotional swings in anyone. Her father wants a cheeseburger and milkshake for one last time, despite not really being able or even allowed to eat this meal. One of the nurses caring for her father chastises King, reminding her that he couldn’t have this food in the hospital—it was against the rules and bad for his vitals. Yet, as the kid of a dying parent, she’s in a new role, caring for her father and wanting to comfort him in these final days. I remember when my dad was dying in the hospital, and we snuck in his dog for one last time. Even though it was brief and probably freaked out the dog, it was one of the last times I saw him smile. King’s essay was just a reminder about this complicated situation that no one can ever prepare for, and how it’s important to manage the intense emotions that are bubbling below.
Other essays were personal, but not always emotionally impactful. I appreciated “Ms. Girl Power” which explored King’s discovery and early understanding of feminism, as well as “The Temple of Feminine Perfection”, which details her experiences as a dancer in a club. Her reflections on the customers and other dancers were funny and descriptive. “Front of the House” was another great essay for anyone who has worked in a restaurant. It brought me back to the days of waiting tables, and why I don’t really miss that time at all. Other essays like “Some Notes Towards a Theory of an Old Dad” and “Hey Big Spender” discuss King’s own personality and its relationship or influence from her father and his idiosyncrasies. Overall, this is a solid collection from the unique voice of an important writer and cultural critic. While many of the essays look within and are reflective, there are important cultural and social insights to glean from King’s writing. Her essays in this collection are a wild ride through drinking and drugging, mental health challenges and treatment, recovery, and caring for sick and dying parents. This is a collection that offers both laughter and humor but also delves into deeper emotions like the sadness of depression and the struggles with anger management to the grief and guilt of losing a parent. I’ll definitely revisit some of these essays, and I could even imagine using some of them in a writing class to help students understand how to reflect on and make meaning from challenging experiences and situations. I’m looking forward to eventually reading Tacky and reading more of King’s future work.

Rax King's reflective and funny storytelling returns in this memoir in essays. Overall the collection is about sobriety, King's relationships, and Daddy Issues but tangents and related commentary on pop culture and general society. Reads like a journal, love letter, and a script for a hulu comedy series all at once.

3.5/5 stars

Thank you to #NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of the ebook in exchange for an honest review.

This book is perfectly fine, but these essays are basically semi-funny blog posts from 2006. To be fair, that was the height of blog post mania!

I absolutely loved Rax King’s book Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer, so I was excited to learn that she had a new book coming out. Sloppy is a collection of personal essays dealing with addiction, sobriety, mental health, relationships, and so much more. I really enjoy Rax’s writing. She’s able to infuse a lot of humor into essays about dark topics without ever feeling like she isn’t taking the material seriously.

Something that I appreciated about Tacky that’s also present in Sloppy is how she writes about very specific things or experiences. Like early internet friendships on the Neopets forums, early misunderstandings of feminism, or lessons learned from the reality show Alone. It makes the book feel distinct and not like something that could’ve just come from any writer. Rax’s writing has such a unique voice and the essays are full of interesting, humorous, poignant, and thought-provoking stories.

Personal essays about recovering from a life of bad behavior. She writes about sobriety, mental health, losing a parent and other heavy topics through an approachable lens. So honest, funny and engaging. You might not like her, but you’ll definitely love her.

Sloppy by Rax King is a sharp, funny, and tender memoir-in-essays that explores the messy intersections of love, trauma, and food. King cleverly uses lowbrow cultural touchstones—like mall food, trashy TV, and chain restaurants—as gateways into deeper reflections on identity, heartbreak, and recovery.

The prose is whip-smart and emotionally raw, Essays like her ode to Guy Fieri or her meditation on Hot Pockets are more than nostalgic—King treats pop culture with intellectual rigor and unflinching personal honesty.

Sloppy is about indulgence, shame, comfort, and how joy can still thrive in unlikely places. It’s a defiant celebration of loving what you love.

Funny, poignant, and fiercely original—Sloppy is a love letter to the imperfect parts of ourselves.

loppy is sharp, raw, and deliciously irreverent—the kind of book that made me laugh out loud while simultaneously wincing at its honesty. Rax King has a gift for dark humor, the kind that isn’t just clever, but also rooted in something real and vulnerable.

What I loved most about this novel is how it leans into messiness—not just in plot, but in emotion, relationships, and self-perception. King doesn’t clean up the narrative for the reader’s comfort, and that’s what makes it so engaging. There’s something refreshing about a voice that embraces chaos and contradiction with wit and style.

I've never heard of Rax King or read anything by her prior to this, but I do enjoy essays and yes, the quote from The Washington Post on the cover of the book "Bettie Page meets Carrie Bradshaw" helped to sell me on this.

I was incredibly impressed very early on with the first few essays. I connected with Rax as she wrote about school:

I desperately wanted to pay attention to whatever my teachers were saying about, I don't know, the Spanish-American War probably. (Anytime you can't remember what your teachers were blathering on about, it was the Spanish-American War. Doesn't it just sound like the kind of lesson you zoned out for?) The ADHD lad must have desperately wanted to pay attention, too. He acted out and I caved in.

And the 'helpful' mentors who think you're just not organized and need a to-do list:


"...Get a task, write it down, do a task, cross it off. All day, every day."
I squinted at his list. It was evening, and still the only one task crossed off: Make a to-do list. ... "Yeah, well. I'm not having such a good day myself."

Even when Rax writes about her work dancing (stripping) and how she wasn't particularly good at it, except for the one time ("It was a complete accident, as are most instances of me being good at my job."), I could identify - not as a dancer or stripper, but as someone who never feels as though they fit in with their job, even if they are 'successful.'

Unlike Rax, who grew up in what we might call a troubled family ("My family is drunks the way other families are Teamsters or actors.") and so my identifying with Ms King waned as I got deeper into the collection of essays. They were still well written and clearly Rax King was shedding some uncomfortable parts of her past as she was working to identify why she is the person she is today.

But I definitely got left behind when she talked about her drug use. I'm not that person and I have difficulty understanding understanding it myself. Anything beyond college experimentation is foreign to me.

Overall, as stated, I'm really impressed. I don't find a lot of essayists that I enjoy (I'm an outlier - I am not a fan of David Sedaris or Augusten Burroughs) but I will definitely look forward to reading more by Rax King. I think she has some very valuable things to say and she says them very well.

This book contains the following:

Sloppy
Proud Alcohlic Stock
Shoplifting from Brandy Melville
Pants on Fire
The Temple of Feminine Perfection
Anger Management
Ten Items
Your Pet Is Dying: An Online Life
Mr. Girl Power
Front of House
Bad Friend
Up from Sloth
Some Notes Towards a Theory of an Old Dad
Hey Big Spender
Commitment Issues
Domesticating the Wolf of Wall Street
Looking for a good book? Sloppy, by Rax King, is a delectable collection of essays. Hard hitting, personal drama calmly looked at with a discerning eye.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

A solid collection! Rax's writing is so compelling that even when I don't directly relate to the subject matter, I have a really hard time putting it down. Feels a little less focused than Tacky but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'll read anything Rax writes. Fans of Samantha Irby and other humorous-yet-tender essay collections should read this!

Faves were Your Pet Is Dying: An Online Life and Commitment Issues.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review! This book comes out on July 29th, 2025.

Thanks to NetGalley and Vintage for the free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

After reading Tacky by Rax King, I was excited to read her next book, Sloppy. But this one felt, well, messier than her previous book. A little more unorganized and disjointed. I still liked it quite a bit, but it didn't feel cohesive. I appreciate how honest Rax King is in her work. Being able to see through her eyes is really fascinating. I'm generally a pretty boring person, so understanding even a little bit about her experiences is a great depiction of what reading can do, especially reading memoirs.

I do generally wish this was a bit more organized or flowed a little better, but it's still a good book.

I am OBSESSED with Tacky, so I've been looking forward to Sloppy. King is as insightful and funny as ever in these essays, but I think the overarching thread/project is perhaps not as tight or clear as in King's debut. That said, I will continue to devour literally anything King ever publishes.