Sarah Hyatt's Reviews > Yes Please

No, thank you.

I was supposed to love this book and as I always do when I find myself super disappointed, I looked back through other reviews to see if I was alone. I don't think I am alone, but no one is expressing my disappointment quite how I need it to be expressed, so I get to do that myself this time around.

I just kept waiting... and waiting... and waiting. The moment it was going to get good and awesome had to be right around the corner! Soon I would get past all the filler and all the fluff and dig into the heart of the book! It would be so great! I was so excited!

And then I realized I had under fifty pages left.

In the book, I waded through:

A lot of celebrity name droppingI never figured out if it was supposed to be ironic, sarcastic, cute... I'm not sure. There is no way to do this that isn't obnoxious. Even with a disclaimer about it being obnoxious, it is still obnoxious. If you genuinely, really need to tell a story about your friend who happens to be a famous celebrity person, and they are really a part of the story, by all means, please tell it. But if there is no story, or one that is only half-told or glossed over.... There is no point.

A lot of filler. Her parents wrote parts of it. And then some other dude wrote part of it. And then there was a chapter of footnotes as a joke, which was super funny back in 1990 something, but which really just take up space and make reading difficult. Lists! Copy pasted emails! There was a lot of writing about writing a book. Hey, Amy? JUST DO THE THING.

A lot of confusion: Stories started and stopped. Kindergarten, mid-twenties, what? Are we going back to kindergarten? Did I miss something? Is that thread going to be picked up again? How does this connect? TRANSITION SENTENCES WOULD HELP.

A lot of trying to be funny... and not being funny. Which is weird because I think Amy is a very funny person. But the book comes off as cloying, it's too much "THIS IS FUNNY" and not enough content. It feels like trying (and also not trying at the same time. Maybe this book is better than I thought because that really is a momentous feat). Maybe it just didn't translate well to print. I don't know.

The highlight of the book for me was the mention of Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear. Because that book is fantastic and true. I like that Amy pointed out exactly why it is awesome and why the situation with the producer was uncomfortable (she said no, he kept asking). De Becker has helped me to identify these little things that feel "off" to me and allowed me to pinpoint why, so I appreciate this type of thing. But now, I'm reviewing The Gift of Fear instead of this book. And if that's my main takeaway, something is wrong.