This Might Be Too Personal

by Alyssa Shelasky

A frisky, feminine, funny, and profoundly genuine essay collection on relationships, sex, motherhood, and finding yourself, by the editor of New York Magazine's "Sex Diaries."

Alyssa Shelasky has a lot to tell you.

In this hilarious and intimate essay collection, Alyssa navigates life as a wild-hearted woman and her thrilling career as a sex, relationship, and celebrity writer in New York City. From running away from the “perfect” future husband(s), to interviewing A-list stars while contemplating an abortion, to bypassing men entirely to have a baby with an anonymous sperm donor,to partnering up with a sexy enigma while extremely pregnant and eventually finding a soulmate whom she swears she’ll never marry, Alyssa’s essays paint a deeply genuine, romantic, and uproarious portrait of a woman who lives by her own paradigm of love and lust, and who refuses to settle or sacrifice her fierce inner-spirit, sometimes to her own regret and detriment. Through her stories, confessions, and columns, she shares all the beautiful, embarrassing, and emotional details of her bleeding heart and busy bedroom.

This Might Be Too Personal is like having (several) drinks with your best friend who has seen, heard, and done everything. Literally, everything. Told with a refreshing candor with jolts of humor, comforting relatability, and irresistible energy, Alyssa’s book is the ultimate meditation on living an authentic life with big feelings, hard decisions, and the small victories and painful mistakes of motherhood, womanhood, and profound independence.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Essays, Humor, Biography Memoir, Autobiography, Audiobook

256 pages, Hardcover

Published May 17, 2022

Reviews

[abigail ❥ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars
ARC provided by St. Martin's Press & NG

Humorous & fun—like having a convo with your best friends! This collection of intimate essays follows Alyssa's life as she navigates through her career, love, heartbreak, and shortcomings. Shelasky's life has been compared to the fictional life of Carrie Bradshaw—wild and vivacious. Living in New York City to LA to Roma and DC... Alyssa's life is not short of adventures or stories. Throughout all of the accomplishments she made along the way, she was able to complete the one she wanted the most.

This was a very easy and fast read. I found each essay very relatable and moving in soo many ways. Everything touched me, ultimately having many heartbreaking moments as well as heart patching.

[Lauren D'Souza · Rating 3 out of 5]

This sounded like a fun collection of essays and reflections on a life of being in the world of celebrity, sex journalism, and more from a woman who's been called the "real life Carrie Bradshaw." But I didn't really vibe with it. Her humor wasn't my style (basically - I didn't find these essays very funny?), and I feel like some of the humor comes from these one-off, punchy lines like "I had an hour after interviewing Sarah Jessica Parker to make it to my abortion" or "My mom asked if I brought a vibrator to my IUI appointment." That's probably a product of her journalism background, where she has to hook the reader in with an attention-grabber, but I don't think it works as well in this format.

I also felt like I was missing some key background on who she is. She either comes into the collection presuming that you know her, or you don't really need to know much more than the fact that she's a journalist who writes about lifestyle and sex topics. But I lacked a connection to her from the very beginning, feeling like I needed to get to know her first before diving into these antics.

Finally, I think this essay collection would have been better described as a woman's journey into being a single mother by choice, tackling dating while being pregnant and raising a daughter on her own. That's really what the majority of these essays are about, at least the ones that are the most interesting to read.

One more thing that's a bit of a nit, but she mentions that she got the job writing the Sex Diaries column because the higher-ups at The Cut heard that she was becoming a single mother by choice and that she was desperate for a job, so they offered it to her. The privilege inherent in this really bothers me - I know that it's not her fault, per se, but it's emblematic of what's wrong with industries like this. Shelasky acknowledges that she wasn't at the forefront of sex culture, as a primarily heterosexual, single-partnered-at-a-time, not-into-kinks kind of person. I know Shelasky did a good job as the writer of this column, but I would have also loved to see a woman of color, non-cishet person who is typically underrepresented when talking about sex manage a column like this.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Macmillan Audio for the ARC via Netgalley.

[Amy Invernizzi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a free e-ARC for my honest review, from Netgalley

This was...not my fave. I think that this book does not really live up to the description, which describes it as "hilarious and intimate" and " the ultimate meditation on living an authentic life with big feelings, hard decisions, and the small victories and painful mistakes of motherhood, womanhood, and profound independence." To be honest, I was expecting a humorous essay collection about the author's time as a sex/relationship journalist. Instead, I felt like many of the essays felt a bit flat and bland. I kept finding myself wondering "why am I supposed to care about this?"

I'll be honest: I was not familiar with Alyssa's writing prior to this book, nor have I ever read Sex Diaries (her column) which sounds a lot more my taste than this book turned out to be. Maybe if I were familiar with the author previously, this book would have landed better with me. I felt like the majority of this book focused on Alyssa's journey toward having a baby via sperm donation/choosing to be a single mom--which in itself has the potential to make for a cool and interesting story, but 1- I didn't feel llike that was what was marketed to me with this book, and 2- I did not find Alyssa's telling of this story all that compelling.

I guess I also feel like this never really felt very "intimate" to me, if that makes sense? Obviously it's every author's right to divulge details or not, but if you're going to write a memoir, I kinda feel like...getting into intimate detail is the point, no? It felt kind of like Alyssa was convinced to write this book by her agent or something and the execution was fairly meh.

Were there funny and interesting moments in this book? Sure, absolutely. But overall I wouldn't think of this as a "hilarious" essay collection, nor did I really feel like it talked all that much about her journalistic career (which is what I was more interested in when I picked this up).

I always feel bad when I give "negative" reviews to personl memoirs but...I really just didn't vibe with this one.

[Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

What do you MEAN this might be too personal. This felt barely personal. Every time the author would start to explore a deeper theme or feeling she’d end the chapter with some cutesy sentence that made me feel like I was reading a college admissions essay. I’m annoyed about how many memoirs these days seem to be written by a white millennial who is obsessed with namedropping the celebrities she partied with when she had a relationship column at some girlboss magazine. I can name like six of these. Jesus.

[The Lexington Bookie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking for a lighter memoir, and at first I thought I had found it in Shelasky's book. However, the further I continued to read, the more I disliked the author. As she tells readers about her climb up the journalism social ladder as a dating columnist, I was intruiged by her honesty and loving how the title of the book fit her content so well- the writing was indeed so personal. But as she continued in her tales, Shelasky starts to get cocky in her social climb, and isolates those who aren't exactly financially able to follow love to Rome and live in New York and just buy a round of artificial insemination. In what I believe was an attempt to be relatable, she became unrelatable the further the reader gets. Additionally, she went around in circles about her love life and it was almost difficult to keep reading her reflections on how it all fell apart and how unsuccessful in love she was, but she was also cause for a lot of her problems- like she struggled to accept that responsibility.
In conclusion, I was unimpressed by the author, and disappointed by this memoir. Are there fun and interesting moments? Yes, but they weren't enough to eclipse the issues I struggled with.

[Mara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Might Be Too Personal is a hilarious and vulnerable memoir (collection of essays?) that I really enjoyed. When you’re reading it, it’s like you’re having a conversation with a girlfriend who always has the best stories and doesn’t hold back. Shelasky has worked as a writer for the past twenty odd years in magazines, newspapers, and TV, and I loved her references of cultural touchstones. At first I was a little put off by the tone of the book. It seemed a little immature and braggy, but I was immediately entertained and persisted. Shelasky starts off in her twenties and goes into her present-day life in her forties.

I really enjoyed how she grew up in the memoir/essays and how her life and what she wanted evolved. I especially loved the parts about her time and friendships in Los Angeles, childbirth, and motherhood. I really appreciated how she views her children and family and friends. She has such an open and welcoming view with low stakes. It makes me wonder how I can incorporate that same view as a mother of two similarly aged children. It’s clear how much she enjoys and embraces her children and family. I listened to the audiobook, which was narrated by the author. It gave the book such great personality and I loved her delivery and parts where she became choked up.

Thank you St. Martin’s Press / Macmillan Audio for providing this ebook / audiobook ARC. All thoughts are my own.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

lovedddd

[Esther Swift · Rating 2 out of 5]

picked this up at the local library bc i thought it looked like something i might love but putting it down at 2 stars bc i struggled w it so much on a moral level.

alyssa is a good writer, no doubt, & what she writes is beautiful & authentic. her stories are something from a life i never lived but maybe would have without hope. other of her stories perfectly capture how i feel even now: single & sometimes feeling very misunderstood.

all that aside, alyssa spends her entire life running away from mom/wife/traditional womanhood &, in the end, finds that is exactly what gives her fulfillment. pop off, queen, im not here to tell you you're wrong, but the book was constantly contradictory for me & i felt constantly upset.

[Lizzie R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alyssa is a fantastic writer, and I appreciated how she used humor and unfiltered, raw vulnerability to communicate her story and learnings. There were several parts that made me laugh out loud. A friend of mine gave me this book, and the themes in it are very much on mind as of late. So it’s a timely read, especially for women in their 20s!

[Mediaman · Rating 1 out of 5]

An immoral, bed-hopping "sex journalist" (two words that should never be put together) thinks she's Carrie Bradshaw and writes of her hedonistic life, including abortion, miscarriage, pregnancy from a sperm bank, and insisting on never getting married. Her life reads more like a bad Jerry Springer episode, and somehow she seems proud of it all.

Claiming to have been raised in a family that would support her "no matter what," Alyssa chooses to rebel at anything moral and sleeps with pretty much every guy she encounters just to prove she's attractive--or at least f-able. Meanwhile she dumps a bunch of ex-fiancés, falls in love with her Greek dentist (then dumps him as well after three years), writes about her affairs in big New York magazines, and puts together a book that sounds like a very long, dull Cosmopolitan sex article.

It's all pretty disgusting and represents what's wrong with certain American women today, particularly New England liberals that want total control of their bodies and pregnancies but refuse to do anything the traditional way. She sleeps around and has a casual abortion, then turns around a little later and wants a baby so goes to get anonymous sperm implanted. Why didn't she just keep the baby she got rid of? Or have a child with one of the many men she claimed to be in love with before she ran away from them?

While she is trying to promote female empowerment Shelasky instead comes across as a mentally-ill, insecure, Jewish hypocrite that's a horrible role model for her daughter. Instead of living a princess-like fairy tale life that she rejects, she makes up her own imaginary world with a false reality where there are no consequences for any sexual actions and she only seems interested in her own selfish sexual happiness disregarding that others are harmed along with way.

The problem is New York City publishers think this is all great, that her progressive slut behavior makes her very enticing fake "journalist." And there will be female readers that probably think this book is good because Alyssa mirrors the Carrie Bradshaw "Sex and the City" lifestyle. Instead they should all take a deeper look at what Shelasky is really preaching with her bad life choices and how she is willing to hurt anyone (including her daughter) in order to rebel against men and traditional morals.

[Elyse Gunn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book, but returned it to the library after two chapters. On one page the author is describing herself as a “natural born feminist” and on the next page she’s describing Lindsay Lohan and Tila Tequila as “coke whores,” pitting them against ‘respectable’ famous women *worthy* of admiring.

[Sydney · Rating 4 out of 5]

*I was able to read this book early via NetGalley thanks to St. Martin's Press!*

The title of this book does not lie. These essays get personal. Too personal? Maybe oversharing at times, but always vulnerable, occasionally gossipy, and overall a blast to read.

Reading This Might Be Too Personal was like sitting down for coffee - or maybe a boozy brunch - with your cool older friend and listening to her share her wisdom, but also all the wild stories of her youth. Shelasky takes us from the chaotic moments following the breaking of her first engagement all the way up to the present chaos of the pandemic, sharing tales of everything from broken hearts to girls' trips to sexual assault to single motherhood on the way. I laughed, I almost cried a couple of times, and I found myself gobbling up each essay like a little piece of chocolate.

In some ways, though, this feels like two books. I think some of this comes from the simple fact that it covers a massive chunk of time. No one is the same at 25 as they are at 42, so of course the stories would change as Shelasky aged, settled down, and became a parent. But I found myself wishing that the book had ended after her daughter Hazel's birth, a triumphant moment that felt like the culmination of the journey Shelasky was on during the first half of the book. For obvious reasons, the stories are far less wild and chaotic after that point (although there's still plenty of chaos), making it feel like a second, more sedate installment of the memoir rather than a continuation of the same story. The essays also felt somewhat more disjointed after that point. It was as if we'd reached a natural conclusion to the story and yet continued pushing past it, to the detriment of the flow of it all.

Look, it's hard to make critiques about how a person chooses to share their life story. Do I wish Shelasky had saved the stories of motherhood and middle-aged romance (Is this a spoiler? Can memoirs have spoilers?) for a second book that was more focused on that topic? Sure. Did I still enjoy the stories she told of raising Hazel, falling in love with Sam, having River, and figuring out what building a family meant? Of course. The same honesty and humor was present, and I laughed and teared up in equal measure.

Despite those second-act stumbles, this book held my attention all the way through, just like those stories told over that hypothetical boozy brunch would. And honestly, what more do you even need from a book of personal essays beyond feeling like a confidant of someone who's had a way more interesting life than you?

4/5

[Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to read This Might Be Too Personal after coming across a list of beach reads by zodiac sign developed by PureWow. Shelasky's essay collection was suggested as a great beach read for Scorpios. Additionally, this read was surprisingly timely for me as I'm about to hit that 37-year-old milestone myself, and I'm childless.

I liked this collection of essays. I thought Shelasky was "cute" in describing her life from being a living Carrie Bradshaw to a single mom by choice. I do feel that some of the stories were given a little bit more flare than they may have occurred in real life - mainly because some experiences that I have had are similar. I felt Shelasky would make it out as if she received some type of privilege when it was just standard protocol. So it made me raise an eyebrow about other claims she made in the story about the occasional special treatment she has received. She comes off as a sweet enough person but may have exaggerated slightly in some nonmajor areas.

I was not all that interested in her Carrie Bradshaw-like years. I feel there was potential for her to go into failed relationships more deeply and be more introspective about them. I got the impression she may have explored her past relationships more deeply in her life, but she did not really share any of her findings with the readers. In that regard, I'm not sure if she got personal enough. It all felt very surface at the beginning.

I think once she began discussing her journey as a single mom by choice, the essays got more interesting. First and foremost, out of all the (clinical) descriptions I've read about postpartum depression, I think she gave a poignant personal description that really helps others understand the experience. She tries to explain the lack of control.

I think she tried to come off as a revolutionary, non-traditional woman. Still, I felt she was a sensitive, nurturing woman who, as she mentioned near the end, had some emotional trauma to wade through (can I suggest some attachment style therapy!? lol). I'd be her friend if I knew her in real life. I found her the most relatable to me when she joined a Mommy and Me group and hated the experience.

The biggest takeaway I got from this novel is how important it is to have a great, support network so you can feel free to live your authentic self.

[Becjoy13 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I normally don’t like to rate someone’s memoir because how can I judge their experience? I’m rating this one because on one hand the writing was good but on the other her logic was extremely flawed. I’m not commenting on her choice to not get married (I agree people can live happily without it or in lifelong partnerships without the need for the government or a god to ok it). My issue is that she constantly contradicted herself, often in sentences that were back to back. For this, it came off as disingenuous and tiresome.

As a side note, why do these upper middle class girls think doing drugs, sleeping around, and caring about celebrity and fashion makes them “bad ass”? More power to you if those things make you happy, but
I hope the author teaches her kids that bad asses care beyond the superficial. I bet the Kardashian sisters will love this.

[Andrea Pole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Might Be Too Personal by Alyssa Shelasky showcases the author's delightfully wicked and irreverent sense of humour, while at the same time exposing a vulnerability and tender underbelly that is not often seen. Yes, there are lots of laugh out loud moments, and you will not be disappointed if that was what drew you to this title, but I was also gratified to learn of Alyssa's gritty determination to live a wholly authentic life on her own terms. These are personal, unfiltered musings that will resonate with many, and you will want to claim a front row seat.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC.

[Brooke Chytil · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays that are both beautiful and heartbreaking in the same breath. They are beautiful reflections full of growth and learning about a life that is a bit different than mine.
I laughed. I cried. The ending is so sweet 🥹
Worth the read with an open mind :)
**She does touch on some hot topics and has a few hot takes that I won’t be implementing into my life ;) but I loved a lot of this book

[Grace Goble · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this a lot!

[Erin McLaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this one so, so much. Truly a real life Carrie Bradshaw!

[Tracee Wellik · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Might Be Too Personal by Alyssa Shelasky is an ultra funny and honest memoir of Alyssa from her wild and raucous 20s to her more settled and mothering 40s. Along the way, Alyssa does things her way and goes against the grain of how women are suppose to be. How they are suppose to settle down, how they should work, how they should have a baby, and how they should find a partner. Alyssa takes all these norms and blows them up with TNT. I love Alyssa’s approach to life and reading each one of her stories was such a breath of fresh air! Because of the intimacy of her stories and her honest and witty dialogue it felt like we had been friends for years and were sitting together having many cocktails on a Saturday night. I almost felt bad that she had shared all of her intimate secrets and I had given nothing to the friendship. 🤪 If you are looking for a memoir that is the whole package filled with raunchy hilarious stories, relationship struggles, being an independent woman, and finding your way this one is for you!

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martins Press for this advanced readers copy in exchange for me thoughts.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this memoir by a fabulous, fun and honest woman. For Sex and the City fans who also enjoy a touch of Maine.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Might Be Too Personal is exactly that - a close look into Alyssa's intimate life. The collection of essays are hilarious as she navigates her career, love, motherhood, and much more. From her early relationships, being engaged three times (absolutely loved that Spike was one of them - instantly knew who you were talking about! Gotta love those competition cooking shows!), an abortion, interviewing celebrities, taking the steps to become a single mother, Alyssa's done it all. Each essay could be a standalone, but all together they make up a wonderful memoir.

I finished this book in a matter of 2 days. It was an easy read that pulled at the heart strings. I cannot relate to her wanting and being a mother, but I did feel for her and laughed with her. Towards the end, I got really excited seeing Maine being spoken about. As a Mainer (although, no idea where the heck the town is - Southern Mainer at it's finest), it's always exciting to hear Mine being mentioned. I immediately looked up where the town was as well as Alyssa's Instagram.

I would recommend this to whomever needs a quick and funny read.

ARC provided by Netgalley for an honest review.

[Shayna · Rating 2 out of 5]

pretty bland and honestly not very funny. i wanted to like the author, and i'm sure she's a great person, but i wasn't into these essays. it felt like a loose collection of stories where someone was telling you about all the wild stuff they got up to, but divulging absolutely nothing of interest. "i did so much crazy shit!" but none of the crazy shit was on the page.

at its heart this is not a book about intimate stories, wild antics or even the author's sordid relationships (none of the ones actually explored in the book were at all sordid, just a few that were barely mentioned in passing). it's a book about the author's journey to motherhood and self-acceptance. which is great, if that's the book you want to read and think you're reading. that's not at all what it presents itself as.

there were a few really touching moments, some funny one-liners, but mostly - to be brutally honest - vaguely insufferable and very mundane exploration of an emotional journey to parenthood and beyond.

[Alissa Avilov · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Might Be Too Personal is a collection of essays by Alyssa Shelasky - "Sex Diares" columnist for New York Magazine.

The description of the book makes it sound like this will be salacious, dramatic, gossipy, and confessional but in reality I found it to be just another book of essays. I was expecting it to *go there* more but found it to be pretty mild and not particularly memorable. While I enjoyed the writing, and the essays ultimately culminated in a satisfying conclusion, I didn't find myself very engaged. I am not super familiar with Alyssa's work which likely contributes to that.

Overall, I think there are some great nuggets here, especially around motherhood as a single mother. I would recommend this book, but I would frame it differently than the description.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This Might Be Too Personal is out now!

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The memoir of a woman who claims to be "the real Carrie Bradshaw" of Sex in the City, this book chronicles the life a woman who goes from being a complete mess to a normal mom. The beginning of this memoir is interesting and fresh, as the author confesses to all kinds of unwise behavior. Then, she decided to become a single mother through artificial insemination by an anonymous donor. Love strikes when she leasts expects, and she becomes part of a relatively normal couple. At this point, the book is not quite as interesting. The character grows, sure, but she's just not as much fun as she was when we first meet her.

[Emma Stanford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tears. Tears. Tears.

[Meredith Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

lovely, relatable, gritty, delightful. i am forever just looking for my “cool little life.”

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alyssa Shelasky isn’t afraid of getting personal. As a writer, she has written about love and sex for decades. She was a real-life Carrie Bradshaw before Sarah Jessica Parker brought the character to life on the screen. She has met celebrities, knows all kinds of stories that she can’t tell in public, and has had her heart broken all over the world.

And eventually she found the thing that could help heal her.

Alyssa grew up in a loving Jewish family in Massachusetts and started to make a name for herself as a freelance writer in New York. She was engaged three times, once to a celebrity chef, but has never been married. She’s pitched dozens of television shows and tried to get a job in writers’ rooms, but she was never quite right for the job. She embraced her freedom, her independence, her self-expression. And then she found herself alone and unhappy and had to ask herself the hard question. What did she really want from her life?

The answer came to her. She wanted motherhood.

She wasn’t young. She wasn’t in a relationship. She had health issues that complicated the process. But she wanted to have a baby, on her own. And when she told her family, her parents and her sister cheered her on. Alyssa found a great fertility doctor. She chose a sperm donor. She breathed deep and crossed her fingers and then she felt like everything was right. And she got pregnant with her daughter.

And while this happens about halfway through the book, it feels like it’s the beginning for Alyssa’s truest love story.

This Might Be Too Personal is a shatteringly honest book of love and heartbreak, of questions about relationships and answers filled with self-awareness and emotional intelligence. There’s the story of her running away from the wedding of her ex-fiance’s best friend, the night after she broke his heart. She had run for blocks, abandoning her shoes, but desperately trying to get to her parents’ home while running into Ethan Hawke. There’s the story of her relationship with the Top Chef competitor that dissolved when he spent too much time traveling and flirting with models. There’s the story of her interviewing Sarah Jessica Parker, and getting a genuine hug from the actor when Alyssa told her she was pregnant.

But while all the name-dropping and world-traveling is interesting, the heart of this book is her pregnancy and her relationship with her daughter, and then adding her partner Sam, and then their adding a son. It’s her devotion to this family that shimmers from the page and makes this not just a fun beach read but an inspiring story of genuine love and acceptance that beats out any self-help book on the shelf.

Don’t get me wrong—I am all in for the celebrity gossip and would have been happy had then been more. But unfortunately for that part of my brain, Alyssa is too classy to publish much of that. And I wasn’t expecting her story to take a turn for the sentimental. But it does, and by then, I was in too deep to leave. I genuinely liked Alyssa and was rooting for her, and I wanted her to find the love and joy she was searching for. And because she did find so much heart-filling love, she’s able to share it with us readers, and we can close the book with fuller hearts and hope for a better future and the idea of a life with ease. This is a genuinely lovely book, and I feel like Alyssa has lifted me up through my time reading it.

Egalleys for This Might Be Too Personal were provided by St. Martin’s Griffin through NetGalley, with many thanks.

[Cammy]

I’ve always been interested in what it would be like to be a single mother by choice and I’ve found a lot of the stories to be hard to come by. A lot of stories about single moms are about women who were in a relationship that resulted in the baby and not someone who decides to do it themselves. When I found the author’s essays talking about her journey, I found it so interesting, especially since I’m a writer who also lives in Brooklyn. I like following her online and find her life really interesting!

But this book didn't really make things sound so interesting and I don't know why. I felt bored for most of it. The writing didn't really come off of the page to me. I think it became more interesting when we start the journey of Alyssa getting pregnant, having her baby, and also meeting her partner. I loved hearing about how it felt to have her baby by herself and her magic romance with Sam. Somehow, though, I kept wanting more!

There were some chapters that felt like random anecdotes and not like they tied into the rest of the book at all. Some of them felt like random stories she might tell someone, but they'd be so short that I wondered why they were there. And oddly, even though this is supposed to be super personal, I felt like I didn't learn a lot about her. It felt really surface level, and maybe that was a choice, but I was surprised that it was billed as so revealing. I think the way it hopped around so much felt like there wasn't much cohesion and made me feel more distanced from what was happening. There was this weird lack of setup, like we're supposed to know a lot about her, and a lack of context.

There's also the fact that I was kind of frustrated by the whiteness and privilege lol. The author would talk about how she didn't come from privilege, but she's living in expensive parts of Brooklyn like Carroll Gardens or Dumbo while freelancing, basically. She gets this column at the Cut because the editors know she's having a baby and want to help, which is great, but I'm like how much are you making from this? Where are you getting the money to fly to LA multiple times a month? She did an interview in the New York Times from her house Upstate... where did that come from after she said she couldn't afford a house?

Like I just felt so frustrated by the mentions that she didn't have money when it sounds like she does? Maybe not as much as her peers or friends, but I feel like this stuff would cost money!

Her voice was also just... weird at times. She would say "now she was the center of both of our universes" or something, but her writing was normal otherwise. It would just be these random lines that were really dramatic that felt almost cringy, especially when she talked about how she was such a strong woman for doing everything by herself. I don't know. There's a genre of book that feels like "things fell into place because I'm a white woman" and this was one of them.

[Arika · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook for This Might Be Too Personal and had no background knowledge of the author or any of her accomplishments, so all opinions are based solely on this experience.

I will start with what I enjoyed about this book: Alyssa is an excellent storyteller, not shocking since she is a writer, but many times when authors narrate their books it ends up being a monotone bore. This was not the case for this book. The author was funny, had a great voice for a narration, and added just enough of that *drama* to her stories to make them a little funnier. She did not hold back on the “Insider information” at all, if she knew something about someone, it is in this book. I found this to be refreshing, so many times you read a tell-all and it turns out the author is not actually going to tell you anything you didn’t know. Many of the stories/situations that the author wrote about were awkward or uncomfortable, and listening to them made me cringe even though I wasn’t there! But she somehow doesn’t back down from these impossibly awkward situations and that made it very entertaining to listen to. The book as a whole had a great flow, the author sometimes uses a very lyrical way of writing that is beautiful. I found the parts about motherhood refreshing and real, you can feel how much she loves her kids just from reading a few pages. And lastly, the author is funny. She laughs at herself, at people around her, at situations she is in and basically everything else. She has a great sense of humor and is probably fun to hangout with.

A few notes of things I did not like: I felt that the amount of name-dropping and bragging the author did was very unbalanced with what her career has been. I kept waiting for her to tell us what she had done or accomplished that had launched her into this amazing career where people thought of her as, to quote her, “The real life Carrie Bradshaw” and I just never felt like I got that. At some points the author came off as very snobby and it was unfortunate because I feel like if she could somehow be relatable, it would have changed the whole book. Many times when talking about something that would be considered traditional she became very judgmental and almost mean, making it seem weird if you were to think or agree with any of those things. I usually can overlook something like that but it was mentioned in almost every chapter in some way, and I found it frustrating that someone who lives such an unconventional life would be so terribly judgmental to anyone else just doing their best in the world.

In closing, it was an enjoyable listen. I loved all the big stories and hearing about how someone so different from myself lives. ⅗ stars.

[Lauren Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read parts of NY Mag's Sex Diaries over the years, but not enough to recognize Shelasky's name on sight. I'm not sure how her book ended up on my TBR (I added it ages ago and only picked up a physical copy from the library because I was annoyed my library took it off of libby), but I'm so glad I read it. At one point, Shelasky makes fun of the fact that so many people say she's like Carrie from Sex in the City, and I couldn't help but laugh when she describes the interview she had with Sarah Jessica Parker because of this fact, and I do think there are some similarities in the former half of the book. She describes leaving her ex fiancé's friends' wedding the day (!) after she broke up with him because she couldn't stop crying while he walked down the aisle as a groomsman (she took the wedding gift too, so golden). Her obsession with a Greek dentist which led her to flee New York for LA. The Italian man who she imagined having Italian American babies with, only for him to decide he wanted to be alone, really really alone (iirc, he ended up meditating in the mountains in Asia, alone). But despite that, it's the latter half of the book that really touched me. I rooted for her when she decided to have a child by herself. It was so comforting for me, someone who wants kids eventually, that she figured it out all by herself and how grounding motherhood was for her (I did chuckle at the mommy & me class essay and I wonder if after having her son, she feels differently about those women, though I suspect not). I was touched by her essays about falling in love with her partner and being welcomed into his family, and when he eventually adopts her daughter (she's known him since she was five months old!). As much as she reins in the reader with her dating life mishaps, it was her courage to go after what she wanted and how life ended up unfolding for her that I admired most. It gives me hope that I'll one day feel as comfortable in my own choices as she does at the end of her book.