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A Complicated Woman
'A pin-up and an oracle for millennial women'
DOLLY ALDERTON
Sometimes when I drink wine out of a globulous glass with the thinnest of rims, blocking out the fact it's billed at £14 a pop, I think of baby Becky.
Hair so blonde it's neon white, cheeks so chubby you can't see her eyes. What must she think right now? She must think she made it.
We're a great big adult person.
That was always the plan, right?
In her extraordinary debut, with her trademark lyricism and razor-sharp wit, Ivor Novello Award-winning musician and artist Rebecca Lucy Taylor (aka SELF ESTEEM) takes us on a journey through womanhood - whatever the hell that means.
Through the notes, lyrics and biting observational prose for which Taylor has become renowned, A Complicated Woman offers itself up as a subversive anti-Bible for any woman who has ever cracked under the weight of impossible expectation; who has done unto others the damage that has been wrought upon her; and who has discovered deep within herself a resilience that surprised her.
A Complicated Woman is a cathartic scream of a book that gets to the heart of being a woman in the world today, and cements Taylor as one of the most exciting voices of her generation.
DOLLY ALDERTON
Sometimes when I drink wine out of a globulous glass with the thinnest of rims, blocking out the fact it's billed at £14 a pop, I think of baby Becky.
Hair so blonde it's neon white, cheeks so chubby you can't see her eyes. What must she think right now? She must think she made it.
We're a great big adult person.
That was always the plan, right?
In her extraordinary debut, with her trademark lyricism and razor-sharp wit, Ivor Novello Award-winning musician and artist Rebecca Lucy Taylor (aka SELF ESTEEM) takes us on a journey through womanhood - whatever the hell that means.
Through the notes, lyrics and biting observational prose for which Taylor has become renowned, A Complicated Woman offers itself up as a subversive anti-Bible for any woman who has ever cracked under the weight of impossible expectation; who has done unto others the damage that has been wrought upon her; and who has discovered deep within herself a resilience that surprised her.
A Complicated Woman is a cathartic scream of a book that gets to the heart of being a woman in the world today, and cements Taylor as one of the most exciting voices of her generation.
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Published October 30, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
November 4, 2025
I have never had an original thought, ever
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November 4, 2025Devoured it and will be coming back to it. Like a deep dive into a millennial woman’s brain. Reassuring to know we’re all a bit weird really
November 27, 2025
Rebecca Lucy Taylor (aka Self Esteem) is always the definition of an artist to me. I am consistently blown away how with every album or piece of writing she manages to share something so vulnerable and hyper specific to her that is also shockingly personal to me. I don't know how she does it but she is massively talented and brave and this was a delight and comforting and gutwrenching and hilarious all at once.
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November 3, 2025The book is packed with those deep, tender moments that truly resonate. While the inner thoughts can be a bit of a puzzle to follow, there’s also something oddly familiar about them. Taylor reminds us that we’re all just girls figuring out life’s ups and downs – those relatable, painful, frustrating, bonkers, and good experiences, neatly typed in our phones.
It was such a joy to glimpse into Taylor’s world and feel that comforting sense of connection. Her internal struggles were so much deeper and more intimate than anything else I’ve read, like reading what I actually felt being a woman.
This book is witty and engaging.
It was such a joy to glimpse into Taylor’s world and feel that comforting sense of connection. Her internal struggles were so much deeper and more intimate than anything else I’ve read, like reading what I actually felt being a woman.
This book is witty and engaging.
December 20, 2025
I knew two things when I read the blurb for A Complicated Woman – I really wanted to read it but it would push me out of my comfort zone. I love Taylor’s lyricism in her songs so I knew the prose in the page would be thought provoking but a book without a story or something I could learn from was going to be a challenge. I didn’t realise that the proper challenge would be reviewing the book!
As soon as I started, the one line statements I’ve seen on Taylor’s insta hit me hard, and fast in packs. Some just resonated and rang true with me.
The longer more prose style entries I can hear Taylor saying in the manner of her track I Do This All The Time or Prioritise Pleasure. There is a recurring section header which in a way was a story which is slightly unsettling.
There’s this one section about 2/3rds of the way through just dated 24 November —- which felt Taylor had been in my head.
I don’t know whether I’d class A Complicated Woman as nonfiction or fiction. The short statements felt like a brain dump of random thoughts over a long period of time from Taylor which hedges towards the nonfiction type. But the sections entitled I Did This All The Time I didn’t want to think was real. That said, it could entirely be real the more I think about it.
Taylor has created a work which is scarily real for me. she encapsulates some very real thoughts, fears and concepts for womankind in an unusual but brilliant way. Simply a unique read!
As soon as I started, the one line statements I’ve seen on Taylor’s insta hit me hard, and fast in packs. Some just resonated and rang true with me.
The longer more prose style entries I can hear Taylor saying in the manner of her track I Do This All The Time or Prioritise Pleasure. There is a recurring section header which in a way was a story which is slightly unsettling.
There’s this one section about 2/3rds of the way through just dated 24 November —- which felt Taylor had been in my head.
I don’t know whether I’d class A Complicated Woman as nonfiction or fiction. The short statements felt like a brain dump of random thoughts over a long period of time from Taylor which hedges towards the nonfiction type. But the sections entitled I Did This All The Time I didn’t want to think was real. That said, it could entirely be real the more I think about it.
Taylor has created a work which is scarily real for me. she encapsulates some very real thoughts, fears and concepts for womankind in an unusual but brilliant way. Simply a unique read!
December 6, 2025
Wish I could give it 500 stars
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December 17, 2025i'm doing a Big Clear Out atm and this book made me feel similar to finding cards and letters and handmade gifts from my youth
November 21, 2025
“You all made me feel too insane for too long”, wrote Rebecca Lucy Taylor, aka Self Esteem, on 7 November 2018; in her full-length debut A Complicated Woman, we see Taylor’s interior odyssey in all its glory, pain, ugliness, hilarity, from pre-Compliments Please through albums 2&3 and into the present. Some notes appeared in Taylor’s SELF ESTEEM (2021), a small limited book published just after the release of her landmark second album Prioritise Pleasure. I couldn’t review that book myself (I edited & published it via The YourShelf Press, one of the best things I’ve ever done!), but it’s such a pleasure to now get a chance to read Taylor’s work with fresh eyes, as a fan, and to find I still love it so deeply, as bold and moving as ever. Where SELF ESTEEM was concerned with the run-up to each of the first two albums, here that writing is recontextualised in the maelstrom of success of the second album, and the “difficult follow-up” third album. Much like that album, with its shared title, there is a theme threaded through here, of Taylor engaging with her inner child, “the only child I know”, speaking across time to offer a hand backwards, to reassure, to heal, a difficult gesture to make let alone write about. I loved the longer pieces, like the ‘I Did This All The Time’ series, which bleakly / hilariously addresses, amongst other nuanced ideas, an important question: is the best thing an indie woman musician can do for her career to go missing? I also loved the note dated 26 January 2023, which sees Taylor “Crawling from the embers like I knew / Preached it up and down the country like a fool / There's just nothing left but more uncomfortable truth”. I hope it might make its way into a song still. It’s an honour and joy just to know RLT, and to have played even my tiny role in spurring on her literary ambitions. I’ve felt for seven years now that she is one of our best writers and she continues to prove me right. Excited for her “coming out as uncomplicated on the next album”!
November 26, 2025
Now Dolly Alderton is someone who I consider an oracle, and she considers Rebecca Lucy Taylor (hereby referred to as RLT) an oracle and so by the transitive property of oracleity, RLT is also someone I consider an oracle. Also she was a very impassioned contestant on Richard Osman's House of Games, Jo Whiley likes her as does Jodie Comer and I had her album on repeat until my Lily returned last month.
A complicated woman is a book I walked into town for which is more or less a ten mile round trip, or a three Greggs journey (coffee - it's £1.70, and is always hot). It was entirely worth the dander. It isn't, to be completely transparent a book for all humans, but for this human we got along rightly. It's basically a collection of notes saved to her phone, often which have become lyrics in her songs but are also the sort of musings you might have a wee ponder about, the sort of thoughts that pop into your own interior monologue. A mix of pep talk and existential crisis, and also just observations that are astute all on their own.
If you are in your thirties/forties and maybe a lack of children gives you pause or that you don't tick the box for some of those other metrics people like to use to say yes this person is now a successful adult (marriage, house, 'proper' career etc) then you'll get along with RLT. It does fall into the same venn diagram as Dolly's Everything I Know About Love (EIKAL) but in a much less linear way. I love it similarly but differently. One for the keeper shelf but also one I wouldn't recommend as easily as I do with my Dolly. BUT if you are of sound judgement (ie. Love EIKAL) then you'll probably find RLT's book a happy addition to your canon of women who are tremendous and wise and comforting.
I think it was Emma Thompson who said (and this is not verbatim) that there are books that come along when we need them. I have not been having the time of my life of late but RLT helped so for that and for always it shall be 5/5.
A complicated woman is a book I walked into town for which is more or less a ten mile round trip, or a three Greggs journey (coffee - it's £1.70, and is always hot). It was entirely worth the dander. It isn't, to be completely transparent a book for all humans, but for this human we got along rightly. It's basically a collection of notes saved to her phone, often which have become lyrics in her songs but are also the sort of musings you might have a wee ponder about, the sort of thoughts that pop into your own interior monologue. A mix of pep talk and existential crisis, and also just observations that are astute all on their own.
If you are in your thirties/forties and maybe a lack of children gives you pause or that you don't tick the box for some of those other metrics people like to use to say yes this person is now a successful adult (marriage, house, 'proper' career etc) then you'll get along with RLT. It does fall into the same venn diagram as Dolly's Everything I Know About Love (EIKAL) but in a much less linear way. I love it similarly but differently. One for the keeper shelf but also one I wouldn't recommend as easily as I do with my Dolly. BUT if you are of sound judgement (ie. Love EIKAL) then you'll probably find RLT's book a happy addition to your canon of women who are tremendous and wise and comforting.
I think it was Emma Thompson who said (and this is not verbatim) that there are books that come along when we need them. I have not been having the time of my life of late but RLT helped so for that and for always it shall be 5/5.
November 4, 2025
❤️ Blurb -
Sometimes when I drink wine out of a globulous glass with the thinnest of rims, blocking out the fact it's billed at £14 a pop, I think of baby Becky.
Hair so blonde it's neon white, cheeks so chubby you can't see her eyes. What must she think right now? She must think she made it.
We're a great big adult person.
That was always the plan, right?
In her extraordinary debut, with her trademark lyricism and razor-sharp wit, Ivor Novello Award-winning musician and artist Rebecca Lucy Taylor (aka SELF ESTEEM) takes us on a journey through womanhood - whatever the hell that means.
Through the notes, lyrics and biting observational prose for which Taylor has become renowned, A Complicated Woman offers itself up as a subversive anti-Bible for any woman who has ever cracked under the weight of impossible expectation; who has done unto others the damage that has been wrought upon her; and who has discovered deep within herself a resilience that surprised her.
A Complicated Woman is a cathartic scream of a book that gets to the heart of being a woman in the world today, and cements Taylor as one of the most exciting voices of her generation.
💜 Review -
This was such an interesting read. I hadn't read anything like it before. I was hooked from the very first page and I kept reading until the end. I found the book interesting and entertaining and it will stay with me for a long time. I highly recommend it and I look forward to reading more by the author.
💝 Thank you to Random Things Tours, the author and publisher for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Sometimes when I drink wine out of a globulous glass with the thinnest of rims, blocking out the fact it's billed at £14 a pop, I think of baby Becky.
Hair so blonde it's neon white, cheeks so chubby you can't see her eyes. What must she think right now? She must think she made it.
We're a great big adult person.
That was always the plan, right?
In her extraordinary debut, with her trademark lyricism and razor-sharp wit, Ivor Novello Award-winning musician and artist Rebecca Lucy Taylor (aka SELF ESTEEM) takes us on a journey through womanhood - whatever the hell that means.
Through the notes, lyrics and biting observational prose for which Taylor has become renowned, A Complicated Woman offers itself up as a subversive anti-Bible for any woman who has ever cracked under the weight of impossible expectation; who has done unto others the damage that has been wrought upon her; and who has discovered deep within herself a resilience that surprised her.
A Complicated Woman is a cathartic scream of a book that gets to the heart of being a woman in the world today, and cements Taylor as one of the most exciting voices of her generation.
💜 Review -
This was such an interesting read. I hadn't read anything like it before. I was hooked from the very first page and I kept reading until the end. I found the book interesting and entertaining and it will stay with me for a long time. I highly recommend it and I look forward to reading more by the author.
💝 Thank you to Random Things Tours, the author and publisher for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
November 6, 2025
I listened to it the day it came out without reading any reviews and was expecting more of a linear memoir. Instead the book is mainly iPhone notes (as RLT often shares on Instagram) interspersed with a short fictional narrative about her going missing, song lyrics and other short pieces of writing. I love RLT's way with words and how open she is about her darkest thoughts as well as her more general opinions on feminism and Millennial womanhood so this was thought-provoking and enjoyable if a little on the short side.
I think I would have enjoyed the book more in print form as I felt like I was just listening to her read out dates half the time and honestly that got boring, although I know it had to be done.
I think I would have enjoyed the book more in print form as I felt like I was just listening to her read out dates half the time and honestly that got boring, although I know it had to be done.
November 23, 2025
A rambling of self esteems truth telling song lyrics and misogyny induced phone notes. A great one to dip in and out of.
“Gossip is a male invented word for the sharing of truth”
“You have completely not noticed the best times you’ll have”
“So much of life is pulling up outside places you don’t feel brave enough to go into “
“Pray at the altar of Alone Time”
“Cried so much facial recognition didn’t work”
“Suburbia made me so sure I couldn’t be special”
And so on. :) :)
“Gossip is a male invented word for the sharing of truth”
“You have completely not noticed the best times you’ll have”
“So much of life is pulling up outside places you don’t feel brave enough to go into “
“Pray at the altar of Alone Time”
“Cried so much facial recognition didn’t work”
“Suburbia made me so sure I couldn’t be special”
And so on. :) :)
December 9, 2025
I'm not sure what just happened but I'm all in... Finding a similar headspace was joyful - confused at first because it's unique in style but give in and go along with it, read fast, flick those pages and let her voice into your head. Loved suddenly being in the middle of her songs at points. Knocking a half mark off for the depressing hardback cover because it made me sad to look at it every night.
November 5, 2025
I adore Self Esteem as an artist. No there’s a book too. Listened on audiobook and Rebecca Lucy Taylor narrates. At first I found it confusing but gradually fell into its structure and the insight it gives - fascinating and real. Loved it though I’m probably not the target audience. Off to play the albums again.
November 16, 2025
Millenial women truly had both a unique and individual experience growing up (particularly late teens - all of our 20s) but also, after reading this book, we all suffered and endured and loved and cried and laughed for the same reasons?! Exquisite, honest, funny, heartbreaking and real writing from RLT🤍 I am a 40 year old woman who will truly never forget what the 2000s-2010s did to me
Want to read
September 11, 2025She's a porcupine (she's a porcupine), not the cuddly kind
...
- the femme fatale in the Sparks video is an accomplished artist in her own right, so kudos to the Mael gaze for bringing her to brighter lights
...
- the femme fatale in the Sparks video is an accomplished artist in her own right, so kudos to the Mael gaze for bringing her to brighter lights
November 3, 2025
sooooo good ! it should be adapted as a play (so we can all witnessed Rebecca Lucy Taylor's beautiful voice and accent) - love the last piece as well and how it brings the whole thread together of past and future selves. womanhood in a book ❤️
November 11, 2025
Rebecca is a new Leonard Cohen.
I apologise to RLT in advance for the male comparison but I ask forgiveness as a fellow Sheffield human. Please keep putting pen to paper, RLT, I just want more of this, it is to me poetry about being alive and what it is to you.
I apologise to RLT in advance for the male comparison but I ask forgiveness as a fellow Sheffield human. Please keep putting pen to paper, RLT, I just want more of this, it is to me poetry about being alive and what it is to you.
November 2, 2025
4.5 / 5 🌟
November 3, 2025
Very funny
Reassuring to know other people have the same anxious thoughts as you
Reassuring to know other people have the same anxious thoughts as you
November 3, 2025
As a big fan of RLT I couldn’t wait to read this. Funny, charming and a bit mad. What a woman.
November 5, 2025
Brilliantly and unflinchingly honest from the very first page.
November 8, 2025
I will re read this many times and every time it will never not be the best thing I've read recently.
November 8, 2025
Self Esteem is my hero! This felt like an extension of her music, love love loved. Lots of wise and silly words on her iPhone notes…”puffing on a peach ice worrying about the end of my life”
November 9, 2025
Hard to explain this book unless you read it. Reminded me that I have never had an original thought. Funny, intense, thought-provoking and so real.
November 9, 2025
Masterpiece
November 11, 2025
Love this woman!
November 13, 2025
Interesting idea for a book
November 13, 2025
The ramblings of a mad woman!
November 18, 2025
Really interesting auto-fiction- such an interesting narrative style and the notes you self were resonant for millennial women everywhere I’m sure
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews