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Every Lie I've Ever Told
"I'm okay!" The best-selling author of The Anti-Cool Girl returns with a devastating, heartbreaking, brilliant, brave, and laugh-out-loud funny memoir of telling lies and being on the brink....
"I had made it! All my dreams had come true. I had an operating fridge, I was doing brilliantly, and I had written the memoir to prove it. I even had online haters. I had conquered life at 30 and nothing was ever going to go wrong again!"
It was all going so well for Rosie Waterland. Until it wasn't.
Until, shockingly, something awful happened and Rosie went into agonising free fall.
Until late one evening, she found herself in a hospital emergency bed, trembling and hooked to a drip. Over the course of that long, painful night, she kept thinking about how ironic it was, that right in the middle of writing a book about lies, she'd ended up telling the most significant lie of all.
A raw, beautiful, sad, shocking - and very, very funny - memoir of all the lies we tell others and the lies we tell ourselves.
The Anti-Cool Girl was shortlisted for the 2016 Indie Book Awards and for the 2016 ABIA Awards for Biography of the Year, and in addition was the winner of the 2016 ABIA Awards People's Choice for the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year.
"I had made it! All my dreams had come true. I had an operating fridge, I was doing brilliantly, and I had written the memoir to prove it. I even had online haters. I had conquered life at 30 and nothing was ever going to go wrong again!"
It was all going so well for Rosie Waterland. Until it wasn't.
Until, shockingly, something awful happened and Rosie went into agonising free fall.
Until late one evening, she found herself in a hospital emergency bed, trembling and hooked to a drip. Over the course of that long, painful night, she kept thinking about how ironic it was, that right in the middle of writing a book about lies, she'd ended up telling the most significant lie of all.
A raw, beautiful, sad, shocking - and very, very funny - memoir of all the lies we tell others and the lies we tell ourselves.
The Anti-Cool Girl was shortlisted for the 2016 Indie Book Awards and for the 2016 ABIA Awards for Biography of the Year, and in addition was the winner of the 2016 ABIA Awards People's Choice for the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year.
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Published August 29, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 117 reviews
July 30, 2017
This review, and the book, need a massive metal-health trigger warning.
I needed this book. It’s an entirely selfish way to review a memoir, but I did.
I’ve been Team Rosie for a while now; I found her through her hilarious Rosie Recaps of The Bachelor, and enjoyed her regular witticisms on social media. The night Rosie had a mental breakdown, I, like many others, was hitting refresh and waiting for the recap of the season finale which would never come. I was honestly worried, because I’d cried for her the day she’d told the world that her best friend and soul mate Tony had died only a few months ago. I knew she was in pain.
I know, from comments I’d seen on social media, that I wasn’t the only one who thought Tony’s life may have ended through suicide. Rosie said it was sudden and tragic, as did every small-town newspaper article I’d been able to find online after he died. Everything they said was cloistered in those vague terms the media uses when they don’t want to trigger people. It didn’t sit right with the outgoing, happy guy I’d seen in Rosie’s Facebook posts, but if her first memoir, Anti-Cool Girl had taught us anything, it was that even the funniest people could be harbouring serious pain. When she announced that this time around, she would be writing about his death, I knew I’d be there on release day, begging for a copy (and thanks to the lovely lady at Dymocks for digging a copy out of their still-packed shipment for me!).
Tony’s death was tragic, and sudden, but it wasn’t by his own hand. My relief on reading this was intense – while I didn’t know him, his death had stayed with me. It’s hideously difficult when someone dies so suddenly, by accident, and so young. I’ve been there. At least, at some point, you realise that there was nothing you could’ve done. Nothing anyone could’ve done.
What we see in Every Lie I’ve Eve Told is a life totally interrupted by grief. Tony died while Rosie was writing this, and the way she represents that is awfully sad, but beautiful. She has retained most of what I assume was the original memoir – chapters which open with a lie, and then proceed through an explanation of what really happened. These chapters are damned funny, and each is like a well-crafted comedy stage show. She had me at Chapter 1, with the tale of the ex-boyfriend who couldn’t handle her farts, and her coping strategy – waiting til he was asleep to part her bum cheeks with her hands and silently create a Dutch oven in bed. It didn’t end well.
Then she throws you headlong into the story of the now – Tony’s death and the events which lead to her mental breakdown and suicide attempt, that night that I was waiting for a funny, sassy recap of a Bachelor finale I now can’t even remember. And that’s what grief is like. You’re cruising along, trying to live your life, perhaps sneaking a rare laugh, and then it hits you again, out of nowhere. That person is gone. Being a dorky English teacher, I loved that these segments were irregular, and not entirely chronological. I couldn’t be sure when the grief would hit, and I came to dread it. Literary form meets real life.
Rosie’s writing has matured and improved in the two years since her first memoir was published (which I say having loved the first one). She is goddamned funny, and disarmingly honest. I love the feminist undertones and the clear message that people have the strength to survive some fairly terrible things, and still be awesome people. The shifts between hilarious admissions and heart-wrenching scenes had me seriously wondering if I was a bad person for laughing uproariously, while the tears were still drying on my cheeks. It was one hell of a ride.
Rosie has said that she’s going to move into fiction writing, and I’m excited about that, and so bloody glad that she’s still here to do it. She’s one of the funniest, bravest and all round coolest women I’ve never met. Thank you for your sheer honesty and sharing your life with us again Rosie.
**If you got to the end of that and thought, “She wasn’t joking, I feel triggered,” please speak to someone – either someone you know and trust, or the wonderful people at Lifeline on 13 11 14.
I needed this book. It’s an entirely selfish way to review a memoir, but I did.
I’ve been Team Rosie for a while now; I found her through her hilarious Rosie Recaps of The Bachelor, and enjoyed her regular witticisms on social media. The night Rosie had a mental breakdown, I, like many others, was hitting refresh and waiting for the recap of the season finale which would never come. I was honestly worried, because I’d cried for her the day she’d told the world that her best friend and soul mate Tony had died only a few months ago. I knew she was in pain.
I know, from comments I’d seen on social media, that I wasn’t the only one who thought Tony’s life may have ended through suicide. Rosie said it was sudden and tragic, as did every small-town newspaper article I’d been able to find online after he died. Everything they said was cloistered in those vague terms the media uses when they don’t want to trigger people. It didn’t sit right with the outgoing, happy guy I’d seen in Rosie’s Facebook posts, but if her first memoir, Anti-Cool Girl had taught us anything, it was that even the funniest people could be harbouring serious pain. When she announced that this time around, she would be writing about his death, I knew I’d be there on release day, begging for a copy (and thanks to the lovely lady at Dymocks for digging a copy out of their still-packed shipment for me!).
Tony’s death was tragic, and sudden, but it wasn’t by his own hand. My relief on reading this was intense – while I didn’t know him, his death had stayed with me. It’s hideously difficult when someone dies so suddenly, by accident, and so young. I’ve been there. At least, at some point, you realise that there was nothing you could’ve done. Nothing anyone could’ve done.
What we see in Every Lie I’ve Eve Told is a life totally interrupted by grief. Tony died while Rosie was writing this, and the way she represents that is awfully sad, but beautiful. She has retained most of what I assume was the original memoir – chapters which open with a lie, and then proceed through an explanation of what really happened. These chapters are damned funny, and each is like a well-crafted comedy stage show. She had me at Chapter 1, with the tale of the ex-boyfriend who couldn’t handle her farts, and her coping strategy – waiting til he was asleep to part her bum cheeks with her hands and silently create a Dutch oven in bed. It didn’t end well.
Then she throws you headlong into the story of the now – Tony’s death and the events which lead to her mental breakdown and suicide attempt, that night that I was waiting for a funny, sassy recap of a Bachelor finale I now can’t even remember. And that’s what grief is like. You’re cruising along, trying to live your life, perhaps sneaking a rare laugh, and then it hits you again, out of nowhere. That person is gone. Being a dorky English teacher, I loved that these segments were irregular, and not entirely chronological. I couldn’t be sure when the grief would hit, and I came to dread it. Literary form meets real life.
Rosie’s writing has matured and improved in the two years since her first memoir was published (which I say having loved the first one). She is goddamned funny, and disarmingly honest. I love the feminist undertones and the clear message that people have the strength to survive some fairly terrible things, and still be awesome people. The shifts between hilarious admissions and heart-wrenching scenes had me seriously wondering if I was a bad person for laughing uproariously, while the tears were still drying on my cheeks. It was one hell of a ride.
Rosie has said that she’s going to move into fiction writing, and I’m excited about that, and so bloody glad that she’s still here to do it. She’s one of the funniest, bravest and all round coolest women I’ve never met. Thank you for your sheer honesty and sharing your life with us again Rosie.
**If you got to the end of that and thought, “She wasn’t joking, I feel triggered,” please speak to someone – either someone you know and trust, or the wonderful people at Lifeline on 13 11 14.
August 27, 2018
"I've never seen anything quite like it. One second, I was lying in my bed, barely noticing the shadowy silhouettes busy at work through the curtain. The next, I heard a moan, then a gasp, and then a gasp, and then...It almost seemed fake, the way it sprayed perfectly and gratuitously across the curtain, the sound it made as it hit the fabric, the slow drips down on the floor.
It was the cliched way blood splatters on walls in B-grade horror movies.
Except it was shit."
Rosie Waterland is narrating this at a time when she was in a hospital bed after taking an overdose. She suffers from various mental health issues, had a painful childhood, and some rough experiences.
She is a writer, blogger, comedienne, performer etc.
For me, the scene above that she narrates at the beginning of her memoir is a metaphor for my reading experience. I felt sprayed. Waterland seemed to use this book as an enema to gratuitously soak us in the very personal and gory details of her personal life; lumps on her labia, the shaving of pubic hair, getting choked and spat at during sex, posting nude photos of herself on social media, bursting blackheads and pimples on boyfriends' backs, abortions and that is just a few of the details we are being inundated with. Under the guise of feminist writing, Waterland makes points about fat being sexy, not brave, for posing nude, men being "pornwashed" in sex leading to a lot of bad sex for women, etc etc.
And from the reviews I have read, some women have found her personal exposures empowering.
I did not, and I am a feminist. I found the whole book an overwhelming deluge of puerile chatter. Someone so lost to herself that she exposes EVERYTHING and numbs the reader to what the point is of the entire exercise. I read an interview with Waterland where the interviewer asked her if her writing was cathartic and she got offended. "Do you ask a man that? Do you ask David Sedaris that?" DAVID SEDARIS. Hahaha, no they don't, because Sedaris is actually funny and adult. His stories are actually well written and thought out. Because his stories are not engulfing people in a mass of "trying to shock but it is not shocking, just tedious", detail. Waterland produces a hot mess that parallels her mental and emotional state.
Okay, I admit, I am not a memoir lover. The line between self-awareness and self-indulgence is often a hazy one. But I have enjoyed some memoirs like The Liar's Club, The Glass Castle, Calypso, Hyperbole and 1/2 etc. However, this book is self-indulgent, chaotic and not particularly funny. And, sadly tediously boring. Pages and pages of her eulogy to Tony, a friend who died. I am sorry for your loss, but why is it you need to include us in all of this? Pain porn. I am not a fan. And it is so prevalent these days and it is so eye-rollingly self-serving.
And I think all this "self-exposure" as literature is the most pedestrian of writing. Reading this was like eating Maccas, junk writing, by someone in deep pain. I have compassion for the pain, but not the writing. It is overwrought, overexposed and vulgar.
What did Oscar Wilde say in Lady Windemere's Fan? "Do you know I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world. Certainly, the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance. It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.."
Waterland falls in the tedious category.
This was a book club recommendation so I finished it. 2 days I'll never get back.
It was the cliched way blood splatters on walls in B-grade horror movies.
Except it was shit."
Rosie Waterland is narrating this at a time when she was in a hospital bed after taking an overdose. She suffers from various mental health issues, had a painful childhood, and some rough experiences.
She is a writer, blogger, comedienne, performer etc.
For me, the scene above that she narrates at the beginning of her memoir is a metaphor for my reading experience. I felt sprayed. Waterland seemed to use this book as an enema to gratuitously soak us in the very personal and gory details of her personal life; lumps on her labia, the shaving of pubic hair, getting choked and spat at during sex, posting nude photos of herself on social media, bursting blackheads and pimples on boyfriends' backs, abortions and that is just a few of the details we are being inundated with. Under the guise of feminist writing, Waterland makes points about fat being sexy, not brave, for posing nude, men being "pornwashed" in sex leading to a lot of bad sex for women, etc etc.
And from the reviews I have read, some women have found her personal exposures empowering.
I did not, and I am a feminist. I found the whole book an overwhelming deluge of puerile chatter. Someone so lost to herself that she exposes EVERYTHING and numbs the reader to what the point is of the entire exercise. I read an interview with Waterland where the interviewer asked her if her writing was cathartic and she got offended. "Do you ask a man that? Do you ask David Sedaris that?" DAVID SEDARIS. Hahaha, no they don't, because Sedaris is actually funny and adult. His stories are actually well written and thought out. Because his stories are not engulfing people in a mass of "trying to shock but it is not shocking, just tedious", detail. Waterland produces a hot mess that parallels her mental and emotional state.
Okay, I admit, I am not a memoir lover. The line between self-awareness and self-indulgence is often a hazy one. But I have enjoyed some memoirs like The Liar's Club, The Glass Castle, Calypso, Hyperbole and 1/2 etc. However, this book is self-indulgent, chaotic and not particularly funny. And, sadly tediously boring. Pages and pages of her eulogy to Tony, a friend who died. I am sorry for your loss, but why is it you need to include us in all of this? Pain porn. I am not a fan. And it is so prevalent these days and it is so eye-rollingly self-serving.
And I think all this "self-exposure" as literature is the most pedestrian of writing. Reading this was like eating Maccas, junk writing, by someone in deep pain. I have compassion for the pain, but not the writing. It is overwrought, overexposed and vulgar.
What did Oscar Wilde say in Lady Windemere's Fan? "Do you know I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world. Certainly, the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance. It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.."
Waterland falls in the tedious category.
This was a book club recommendation so I finished it. 2 days I'll never get back.
March 28, 2018
I don’t know what to write about this book. At one point (OK maybe 2 or 3) I just wanted to throw in the towel and give up. I found the recounting of her abortions very difficult to read through, and while at some moments I was cheering her on for her feminist observations, there were other points where I felt like her own understanding of feminism is ‘girls getting to do the gross stuff that immature men do’. Um no, the suffragettes did not go through what they did so we can fart on our hands and not feel weird about it.
However, in saying that, it’s really hard not to like Rosie herself and admire her for her honesty and vulnerability.
I guess overall the book just made me feel sad. Sad for her, sad for the state of the world today... and maybe that sounds patronising or lame, I don’t know. I realise these thoughts are disjointed but that’s exactly how the book has left me. So do I recommend it? I don’t know.
However, in saying that, it’s really hard not to like Rosie herself and admire her for her honesty and vulnerability.
I guess overall the book just made me feel sad. Sad for her, sad for the state of the world today... and maybe that sounds patronising or lame, I don’t know. I realise these thoughts are disjointed but that’s exactly how the book has left me. So do I recommend it? I don’t know.
September 6, 2017
Every Lie I've Ever Told is Rosie Waterland's second book about her life and experiences. Like most of Australia I fell in love with Rosie's hilarious recaps of The Bachelor, honestly, making work weeks much more bearable laughing along to her astute and hilarious observations. Ever Lie I've Ever Told is a collection of personal essays that each begin with the premise of a falsehood that Rosie has told herself or others. What follows is hilarious and heart-breaking in equal measures.
Every Lie I've Ever Told is Rosie at her absolute best. I honestly could have read it in a single sitting if I was given ample time. Sadly I did not and had to make do with finishing it in three sittings across two days. This book is laugh out loud funny, embarrassingly so. I honestly was constantly sniggering, probably irritating the hell out of my colleagues when I read it at work during lunch. I thoroughly enjoyed the format - particularly the chapter names and reading all her lies. Rosie has a unique talent for blending humour with tragedy and still managing to discuss important social issues.
Honestly, the most important thing about this novel is that it opens the dialogue for some incredibly relevant issues. Issues such as the honesty of mental health, how grief works differently in all of us, abusive and dysfunctional relationship, standards towards women and even abortion (echoing Lindy West, who I watched discuss the same issue at writers week earlier this year). Rosie is so brutally honest like no-one else I have ever read, from fart-sniffing to sexual escapades to mistakes on social media. There is zero pretence, which in a world where we live by social media standards, is such an important gift. To realise we are all a little weird and if you aren'y, you are lying.
In this book you will laugh and you will cry. This is a strong second book and I know I'll eagerly anticipate anything else Rosie swings our way in the future. I would urge you to give this book a go if only to raise you aren't along in this cray world. I give Every Lie I've Ever Told four Polly Pockets, the best toy of our childhood.
Every Lie I've Ever Told is Rosie at her absolute best. I honestly could have read it in a single sitting if I was given ample time. Sadly I did not and had to make do with finishing it in three sittings across two days. This book is laugh out loud funny, embarrassingly so. I honestly was constantly sniggering, probably irritating the hell out of my colleagues when I read it at work during lunch. I thoroughly enjoyed the format - particularly the chapter names and reading all her lies. Rosie has a unique talent for blending humour with tragedy and still managing to discuss important social issues.
Honestly, the most important thing about this novel is that it opens the dialogue for some incredibly relevant issues. Issues such as the honesty of mental health, how grief works differently in all of us, abusive and dysfunctional relationship, standards towards women and even abortion (echoing Lindy West, who I watched discuss the same issue at writers week earlier this year). Rosie is so brutally honest like no-one else I have ever read, from fart-sniffing to sexual escapades to mistakes on social media. There is zero pretence, which in a world where we live by social media standards, is such an important gift. To realise we are all a little weird and if you aren'y, you are lying.
In this book you will laugh and you will cry. This is a strong second book and I know I'll eagerly anticipate anything else Rosie swings our way in the future. I would urge you to give this book a go if only to raise you aren't along in this cray world. I give Every Lie I've Ever Told four Polly Pockets, the best toy of our childhood.
September 10, 2017
I feel like I read 90 percent of these stories in the first book 😒
August 4, 2018
4.5 only because I can't read descriptions of pimple popping without vomiting and had to skip a lot of the more 'gross-out' parts (you know, reading the first sentence of a paragraph and thinking... yup still going... and skipping ahead until it fucking stops) this is a seriously hard hitting book about how mental health crises can really sneak up on you and even though we all think we can keep a lid on that it's shakier ground than we want to believe.
I don't seek out all of these books that are looking at grief in valuable and salient ways, but I have managed to have that reading of a lot of what I have read this year. Just how important it is to look at your trauma and grief head on and really give it the space that it will take from you eventually even if you don't want it to.
I don't seek out all of these books that are looking at grief in valuable and salient ways, but I have managed to have that reading of a lot of what I have read this year. Just how important it is to look at your trauma and grief head on and really give it the space that it will take from you eventually even if you don't want it to.
October 3, 2018
Needs an editor. I think the author feels some lines are so clever or funny they should be repeated. and repeated.
Needs an editor. I think the author feels some lines are so clever or funny they should be repeated. and repeated.
See I think my review is so clever that I repeated it ...
Needs an editor. I think the author feels some lines are so clever or funny they should be repeated. and repeated.
See I think my review is so clever that I repeated it ...
March 4, 2018
Like she phoned in the out takes of the first book.
March 9, 2024
love Rosie’s humour in writing about such awful experiences, good listen !
July 26, 2017
I really loved 'The Anti-Cool Girl' and it's difficult to not compare this book with that one. This one is structured differently and tells the story of a devastating loss, interspersed with chapters about the author's past and present life, which range between truly heartbreaking stories and fart jokes, which is what readers expect and love about Waterland's writing. The central story about losing Tony is very, very sad, and the recounting of Rosie's friendship with him was joyous and beautiful. Waterland is honest about her nervous breakdown and suicide attempt, and she's a trailblazer in terms of young, working, professional celebrities talking about their problems NOW, instead of with mellowed hindsight and older age. I think this book will really speak to younger people and could really help them to access help. For me, the fragmented bits and pieces of stories and comments and columns didn't work, but maybe I shouldn't have read it all at once, or maybe I am simply a bit too old for this structure. A brave and important book, recommended to Waterland fans.
February 2, 2018
This is a compelling page-turner. While actually reading, you want to keep going. Waterland has a great “voice”, sounding like a natural cadence, it is clearly well-crafted. But I am glad I waited a bit since reading to enter this on Goodreads. There’s nothing that really stuck with me from reading this - except a feeling that Waterland overshares and tries to shock with the appearance of bravely referring to bodily functions or habits that “people are too scared to mention”. Reading this is like reading a magazine or blog entry - entertaining at the time but a week later, nothing. Though I did learn an interesting thing about having to wait for abortions.
July 28, 2017
Reading Rosie is like having the best kind of heart-to-heart. There are lots of laughs, some tears and a whole lot of relief that I am not the only one who is not always feeling on top of the world or getting everything right. I wish I could meet more people like Rosie. I would feel so much less alone. I love you Rosie <3 THANK YOU
May 27, 2018
This was a bad book to read when dealing with death in your personal life. This was a bad book to read when dealing with grief in your personal life. This was a bad book to read when dealing with mental illness in your personal life. But it was a very important book to read. Rosie Waterland is the voice I needed today.
October 23, 2018
Rosie's mum refutes most of the claims in The Anti-Cool Girl so I had thought it a central theme of the follow-up memoir, based on the title ... but it's not really mentioned at all.
Waterland is a talented and unafraid writer and this is a great read about what must be very difficult and intensely personal topics. I really appreciated the insights life in general.
Waterland is a talented and unafraid writer and this is a great read about what must be very difficult and intensely personal topics. I really appreciated the insights life in general.
September 16, 2018
I didn't find the book hilarious like many other reviewers, but I do enjoy the author's writing (her online recaps of The Bachelor were fantastic). At its core this book is about loss, grief, and mental illness, and it just left me sad.
March 24, 2020
Well, that was an adventure.
I think it is important to state two things before this review is published:
1) Rosie explains, talks about and experiences mental health in the best way she knows how - via humour (mostly crude) which is very clearly stated at the start of her book.
2) I am not a fan of crude humour
While the overall story was very heartbreaking and the experience of mental health and a rocky childhood were explored in great detail, I found a large portion of this book hard to read. I genuinely love the work of Rosie Waterland, and have for a number of years. But there were a few chapters i did not care for, plus the excessive crude humour put me off. That is not to say this book is bad. It is very entertaining and handles the traumatic experience of grief and PTSD. It just wasn't for me.
I think it is important to state two things before this review is published:
1) Rosie explains, talks about and experiences mental health in the best way she knows how - via humour (mostly crude) which is very clearly stated at the start of her book.
2) I am not a fan of crude humour
While the overall story was very heartbreaking and the experience of mental health and a rocky childhood were explored in great detail, I found a large portion of this book hard to read. I genuinely love the work of Rosie Waterland, and have for a number of years. But there were a few chapters i did not care for, plus the excessive crude humour put me off. That is not to say this book is bad. It is very entertaining and handles the traumatic experience of grief and PTSD. It just wasn't for me.
April 2, 2020
Rosie is as hilarious, tragic, honest, confronting as her debut novel. Definitely worth reading, especially for all those people who put on a brave face in times of crisis. "I need help" can be a hard thing to say.
Thanks Rosie for helping to normalise mental health, and asking for help.
Thanks Rosie for helping to normalise mental health, and asking for help.
September 26, 2020
I did it! It took a while to finish because I knew I’d cry my eyes out, so last night I ran a hot bath with an overpriced bath bomb and finished it.
It’s very close to home in so many ways.
I laughed out loud, I cried beautiful ugly tears.
Very well done
It’s very close to home in so many ways.
I laughed out loud, I cried beautiful ugly tears.
Very well done
October 9, 2020
I really enjoyed this book. It goes into some dark territory but I enjoy Rosie’s candid style and her general wit. She’s a resilient woman.
July 30, 2022
Stunning as usual. Only Rosie can combine disgusting facts, brazen humour and downright heartfelt in one book. What a memoir!
April 27, 2018
"Every Lie I've Ever Told" is hilarious. That much I had expected from this book but Rosie Waterland has also proven to be something more than a comic writer by talking about the death of her best friend in a way that was traumatic as well as healing. Thank you Rosie.
October 11, 2022
Listened on audio as Rosie’s life unfolded like a young girl pouring her heart into a diary. Just not interesting and didn’t cope with more than a quarter of it before giving up in relief of not having to listen to any more.
August 9, 2017
No one but Rosie can make me cry from laughter and cry from heartbreak without turning the page.
Extra points because I managed to snag a signed copy, which also contained a little sneaky drawing of a vagina. #winning
Extra points because I managed to snag a signed copy, which also contained a little sneaky drawing of a vagina. #winning
March 8, 2021
Rosie Waterland is hilarious and has an awful lot of stories to tell from her thirty-odd years. She had me laughing out loud from the very first chapter of this book. The chapter titles alone were enough to make me chuckle.
Rosie doesn’t shy away from the realities of her character and her behaviour regardless of how extreme or embarrassing it may be.
There are some tough topics covered in this memoir of a brief period of her life. It’s an honest, raw and brutal look at grief and mental health. Throughout, Rosie’s honesty and wit shine.
Rosie doesn’t shy away from the realities of her character and her behaviour regardless of how extreme or embarrassing it may be.
There are some tough topics covered in this memoir of a brief period of her life. It’s an honest, raw and brutal look at grief and mental health. Throughout, Rosie’s honesty and wit shine.
February 19, 2018
I came to Rosie’s writing from her podcast - Mum says my memoir is a lie. I really like how honest and upfront Rosie is with her writing and how she manages to make the most tragic of things sound funny or funny-sad. It’s a rare gift when your reading some tough and hard moments in someone’s life but you don’t feel despair, you feel uplifted by Rosie’s humor and tough spirit.
August 13, 2017
If you loved Rosie's 'the anti cool girl', then you'll love 'every lie I've ever told'. I laughed at Rosie's humor, cried at the loss of Tony and smiled at the beautiful memories Rosie shared of her life with Tony.
It normally takes me atleast 2 weeks (minimum) to finish a book but I finished this in less than 2 days.
Do yourself a favour and read Rosie's second memoir.
It normally takes me atleast 2 weeks (minimum) to finish a book but I finished this in less than 2 days.
Do yourself a favour and read Rosie's second memoir.
November 23, 2017
3.5 really. It definitely wasn’t as hilarious as it was made out to be. Rosie writes incredibly well, her honesty, wit and sarcasm make the book enjoyable. The tales of her childhood and suffering were hard to stomach in parts but the way it is handled was nothing short of wonderful. Somehow she makes it seem “okay” that all these horrible things happened in her life. Overall for me it was a very well writing book with its moments of hilarity but sadly I wouldn’t exactly be raving for everyone to go read it right this second... though to be fair I’ll definitely be talking about it for a little while.
December 6, 2017
I’m sorry - I should’ve loved it, but I found it a tedious read. In saying that, ALL THE CREDIT TO ROSIE for sharing herself so open and publicly, and allowing the vulnerability that comes with that. Anything that reduces stigma for those with MH issues is fucking awesome to me - I just didn’t like the book!
December 19, 2019
This book was a surprise, i had no idea.
I had never heard of Rosie Waterland. She is Australian! Really? Where have I been?
It hits you from the first page....like the shhhh..t does.
It is very out there.
But I liked the interweaving of her anecdotes with the story of Tony's death and the grieving.
Different unusual.
I had never heard of Rosie Waterland. She is Australian! Really? Where have I been?
It hits you from the first page....like the shhhh..t does.
It is very out there.
But I liked the interweaving of her anecdotes with the story of Tony's death and the grieving.
Different unusual.
November 23, 2018
Brimming with raw intensity and fierce humour, Waterland has assembled an ensemble of lovely little lies that are impossible to ignore. She's an oversharer, let's be frank; but for every awkward reveal there's an honesty that endears and a story speaking straight from the soul.
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