I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are: Essays and Other Stuff

by Rachel Bloom

A collection of hilarious personal essays, poems and even amusement park maps on the subjects of insecurity, fame, anxiety, and much more from the charming and wickedly funny creator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Rachel Bloom has felt abnormal and out of place her whole life. In this exploration of what she thinks makes her 'different', she's come to realise that a lot of people also feel this way; even people who she otherwise thought were 'normal'.

In a collection of laugh-out-loud funny essays, all told in the unique voice (sometimes singing voice) that made her a star, Rachel writes about everything from her love of Disney, OCD and depression, weirdness, and female friendships to the story of how she didn't poop in the toilet until she was four years old. It's a hilarious, smart, and infinitely relatable collection (except for the pooping thing).

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Audiobook, Humor, Essays, Biography, Mental Health

313 pages, Paperback

First published November 17, 2020

About the author

Rachel Bloom is an American actress, comedian, singer, writer, producer, songwriter, and mental health activist. She is best known for creating, writing and playing the lead role of Rebecca Bunch in The CW comedy-drama series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, for which she won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress-Television Series Musical or Comedy and a Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series.

Reviews

[Jenny Lawson]

If you love her you'll love this book.

[Elle]

MEET RACHEL,


SHES THE COOLEST GIRL IN THE WORLD


WAIT—WRONG RACHEL


IT’S THIS ONE OVER HERE


*Thanks Carrie & Grand Central for my giveaway copy I’m so excited!! 😭😭

[Ellen Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

After all the anticipation, I was worried I had overhyped this for myself. But as I frequently am, about oh so many things, I was wrong.

It was everything it needed to be.

Five stars.

----------------------------

You guys! My copy is finally here! I even tried to do a pretty artsy photo with it, despite not being whatsoever artsy. It did not go well. Turns out, Chloe wants to eat fairy lights for some reason. Idk. Cat reasons.



Anyway. I'm reading this now!

----------------------------

Literally my most anticipated book right now. And it will be until I get my paws on it.

[Jessica J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to explain how much I adore Rachel Bloom and how much Crazy Ex-Girlfriend meant to me. I found this book on Edelweiss, instantly downloaded it, and tore through it in less than nine hours (with a break for therapy that I'm sure Rachel would appreciate).

Not all the essays resonated with me (the one about pooping in the toilet for the first time was... something) but I adored this collection and its overall theme of feeling like you're the only weirdo watching all the normal people be normal. If you love Rachel Bloom or the show, I'm sure you'll love this just as much. I can't wait to read it again when it's out in print.

[Barry Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

equal parts funny and cringe, so, classic Bloom

[Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Celebrity memoirs are a tricky thing to master. Spend too much time on the things that made you famous and you risk preaching to the choir and alienating the reader who may not actually know that much about you. Write it simply as a tell-all or autobiography and it can be redundant or make itself irrelevant in a few years time.

Rachel Bloom nailed it.

Ok, yes, I already was a fan. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is one of the most ridiculous, great and underrated shows of the last five years. It has a very specific tone, which is truly that of Rachel's own. And this book reflects that same voice which is crass, witty, irreverent and utterly honest.

I figured I'd like this book. Being a fan of a celebrity usually means, at the bare minimum, you will find something in their memoir to enjoy. But I truly didn't expect to love this book so much.

The main aspect that I think works best in this book is the theme of 'normalcy,' or rather its elusive nature in Rachel's life. Everything she reflects on—whether that is her childhood bullies, her adoration of musical theater, being Jewish, struggling with OCD and mental health issues, or her romantic encounters—is seen through the lens of what it means to be 'normal' in this world...or at least try to be. Because she honors this theme in every chapter of the book, without it being too repetitive, the entire thing is cohesive and layered. She builds on her experiences, ties back to previous chapters, and creates something multi-faceted, while still being freaking hilarious.

And let's be real, the highlight of this book (and audiobook, LISTEN TO THE AUDIOBOOK), is her voice. Rachel could easily just rely on her comedy stylings to win you over, but it's a lot more nuanced than that (*wink*). When you listen to her, and I assume when you read her words, you can hear both the humor and compassion she has when reflecting on her past self. It's with a critical but comical eye that she writes about growing up, finding yourself, and realizing that no one is really normal.

These are all themes that have been written about time and time again, but Rachel does it in her own way and it sure is refreshing. Props to a celebrity who truly wrote something worth being published. Plus it has ridiculous Harry Potter/Broadway fan fiction and entire musical number about her love FOR Broadway musicals and did I say listen to the audiobook? Ok I'm done.

[Javier · Rating 4 out of 5]

A title that is a reference to “The little mermaid”, a cover inspired by “The babysitters club” covers and an author whose tv-show “Crazy ex-girlfriend” I absolutely adored. This book was made for me!

In this collection of essays, where the overall theme is being the weird kid among the “normal” people (who would want to be normal and boring when you can be a flamboyant and fabulous theater kid?), the author writes about a series of issues like dealing with bullies, insecurity, fame and mental health and her struggles with OCD, anxiety and insomnia.

Though some are pretty serious topics, she writes about them in a very honest way, no sugarcoating her experiences, and I found that very refreshing. Mental health is still a taboo and it’s not everyday that you find a famous person talking about her mental health issues and telling it like it is.

Other essays dealt with lighter topics. A princess fairy tale, a Harry Potter fan fiction, an amusement park map guide map, and some stories about how “Crazy ex-girlfriend” was created and how it changed her life (I really liked those insights into show business). Some of them were hilarious! I’m still laughing about the pooping thing.😂

But if there was a truly relatable moment for me was the sobbing when they sing “the orphanage” in Hamilton (I just get goosebumps thinking about it).

If you are a fan of Rachel Bloom or “Crazy ex-girlfriend” you’re gonna love this book, as you’ll discover a very down to earth person with a great sense of humor and lots of talent (whatever that egg on twitter said!).

Thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton, Coronet for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are is a memoir where Rachel Bloom discusses feeling like she wasn’t normal and not fitting in. The book is a collection of funny, somewhat random stories. This book seemed very honest which is important to me when choosing a memoir. Bloom reminds me so much of her character form Crazy Ex Girlfriend. She also discusses how the show started. Bloom has OCD and many fears which she discusses throughout the book. She’s not afraid to say how she feels even if it’s not what a “normal” person would say or feel. I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are discusses not fitting in a way that is very relatable and at the same time hilarious. I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are talks about Bloom’s struggles with bullying up to accomplishing her goals and living her dreams.

Thank you Grand Central Publishing for I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are.

Full Review: https://justreadingjess.wordpress.com...

[Madeleine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think a golden rule of a memoir is if you write "but that's a whole other book" instead of talking about something, you're writing the wrong book.

While Rachel brushes on some of the stories behind the scenes of Crazy Ex Girlfriend, she skims it to assure us that "that's another book" and leaves us in a kind of jumbled collection of stories about anxiety, spanx, and sh*t.

I feel like I haven't read a good celebrity memoir in a really long time. Rachel Bloom is a person I've followed since she was technically a YouTuber, I loved Crazy Ex Girlfriend, and I think she's a really sharp and funny writer. However, this felt more obligatory in nature than the usual comedian memoir, and included a final chapter written in the Covid-era of 2020 that was both incredibly jarring and making me question how short this book was even with that wedged in during the final days before printing. Because this is a brisk jog of cagey humor and personal stories that don't lend themselves to essays, and don't come near expressing whatever lesson was tied to the point of telling them.

I think when I reached the second chapter (in the first three chapters) about sh*tting was when I lost a lot of my excitement for this book.

I don't mind gross humor, but here it just felt cheap and pointless, and I was physically uncomfortable during the book. I don't know why memoirs tend to dig so personal into bodily functions like that's intimacy, if anything, it felt kind of isolating the more it came up. It's a cheap form of revealing that is often mistaken for being candid but this really, really pushed it too far for me. Bloom's chapter on anxiety was about her compulsion to make embarrassing confessions to her parents, chronically oversharing, while they pleaded with her to keep some things private was how it felt to read this book. This book was an echo of that. It felt like regurgitating therapy sessions.

I love a good mental health memoir. But adding the obligatory "narrative of success" angle while not really diving deep into the dark side of those experiences felt really hollow for me. When the process of getting Crazy Ex Girlfriend made was told in a matter of bullet points but we had an extended fairy-tale saga about Rachel dating two guys from the same sketch comedy group I just felt like this needed a much harsher, stricter edit.

I'm really losing steam with the "oversharing is depth" trend in women's memoirs, but between this and Cazzie David saying she can't have sex after eating a full meal because "there's not room", I think I'm not getting my hopes up to hear more from creators I actually like.

[Eilonwy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3-1/2 stars

Like all memoir/essay collections, this was a mixed bag.

I loved Rachel Bloom’s TV show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for the way it mined humor from awkward, often cringeworthy situations, but generally with empathy towards the people involved -- the laughs weren’t at anyone’s expense, but because it was so easy to imagine oneself doing the same ill-advised things. I also loved it because it treated mental illness insightfully and gently. Also, “Life Isn't a Movie” will forever be one of my favorite songs.

Overall, this book is more of the same kind of humor, and the same approach towards mental/behavioral health issues (which have challenged Rachel since she was a pretty little kid, which I don’t think is uncommon).

I enjoyed the different writing styles Rachel used to tell different stories about herself, from scripts to fairy tales. And I loved how every so often she’d throw in the word “normal” and then add a footnote to remind us how she was remaining on point with her title. This running joke, plus references in later chapters to earlier ones by their numbers, added some playfulness to the book.

The final essay, about the futility of trying to make everyone like her/you, was excellent and definitely a great ending.

Then there is a very poignant Afterword about the pandemic and the death of her songwriting partner, Adam Schlesinger, and how that’s tied up with the joy over the birth of her daughter.

And Rachel’s twelve acknowledgements, written in rhyming couplets, cheer things back up enough to end on a positive note.

I’m not sure I need to read more essay collections from Rachel. But I do need another musical TV show from her!

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I saw this book come up, I immediately downloaded it and moved it to the top of my pile. (If you don't know who Rachel Bloom is, you need to watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend immediately!) This book of memoir/essays touches on the show but is also about growing up strange, getting bullied, etc, etc. Same sense of humor, and same potty mouth. I laughed quite a few times. And I love the Apple paperback feeling of this cover.

One chapter is a full musical production that can be listened to on her website while you read the book. If there is an audio version, that might be the best way to read the book.

I had a copy from the publisher; it came out November 17th and I read it in one day on November 19th.

[Scratch · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly, I liked Rachel Bloom more before reading this book than I do now.

If you have a low tolerance for puerile, potty humor, this is not the book for you. Based on this book, you would think all she does is shit, clit, and tit. Yes, I know that two of those aren't verbs. But it felt like those are the only things she talks about. Stories about menstruating naked and pregnant on the toilet, stories about her parents filming her pooping at age 4, etc.

While she is definitely letting fans know about her personal life *gags*, I did not enjoy any of this. It's like she thought, "Oh no! I've gone 10 pages without talking about my poop! Better start talking about when I started masturbating. Maybe pepper in an anecdote about my vaginal discharges in my underwear." Because that's what fans really want to hear. It's not like I have all my own bodily fluids, and I can stare into a toilet full of shit any day of the week if I really wanted to. No, let me listen to a singer/actress from a show I really like talk about HER bodily fluids, instead of anything specific to her singing and her show.

I would rather just re-watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Turns out Rachel is only 6 months younger than me, and had her wedding within about a month of my wedding. This causes some weird feelings of jealousy, given how Rachel Bloom is famous for her singing. My singing is only popular with very small kids I babysit.

Alas.

[Tiernan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved every second of this! If you're a fan of her show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, this is a must. AND YOU HAVE TO DO THE AUDIOBOOK!

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Books written by comedians tend to be pretty hit and miss, with depth and insight often sacrificed for humour. I don't mean to sound curmudgeonly; readers would quite rightly expect some degree of hilarity given the author's profession, I just find it to be a very fine balance in these types of memoir and they quite often disappoint me for skewing on the wrong side of this balance.

Rachel Bloom's debut book unfortunately fell into the disappointing category for me. I only have a passing familiarity with her work, and requested a copy of this as I wanted a read with some degree of levity given the current affair climate we're living in right now (Covid, US elections, Brexit... etc.). It's worth stating that knowledge of her career and familiarity with her work aren't a prerequisite coming into this.

I Want To Be Where the Normal People Are was just a bit too bitty for my personal taste. The book is a mixture of personal essays (quite a few of them are on her undiagnosed mental health issues) and mildly humorous (and some quite sad) anecdotes from her childhood. The essays were too short to delve into topics with any real depth, and the humour didn't land for me at all.

Might be worth checking out if you're a fan of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but I'm afraid I'm not sure who else I'd recommend this to.

Thank you Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 4 out of 5]

I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are is a brutally honest, laugh out loud funny and wonderfully visceral anthology of essays and assorted pieces from the amazing Rachel Bloom, and what I loved about it is that anyone who has ever felt out of place, been an outsider or has been labelled a weirdo will find this profoundly relatable; you'll find no sugar coating here as she approaches everything with her formidable no-nonsense attitude. At its heart, it is a memoir and one of its greatest lines is ”if you're a person of substance, you are going to get bullied at school”. I strongly believe that some of the most incredible people are those who don't fit into boxes, and although it certainly doesn't feel that way if you're bullied endlessly throughout your formative years for your individuality, I still think that individuality should be celebrated. She rightly addresses the fact that what's normal is not definable despite its ubiquitous use. Bloom explains that if she encounters bullies now she calls them out, and I can attest that the only way I managed to get the target off my back during high school was by doing exactly that (and maybe a little bit of uncharacteristic violence, too).

There's poetry, anecdotes, fairy tales, interviews with past and future selves, diary clippings from her school days, and I found the potent mix of musings from her adult years intertwined with thoughts and feelings from her childhood years interesting and engaging; it's a unique memoir and one of the more fascinating one's I've read. It's wonderfully witty and sardonic in places and approaches the issue of individuality from a refreshingly original perspective. There's nuance throughout the pieces and the book is split into easily readable sections. It explores the issues of bullying, sex, OCD, shame, toilet training and theatre, to name but a few of the topics. It's a quick, absorbing read, and I found it the perfect piece of escapism. In some parts, it's lighthearted and irreverent and others powerful and punchy and the wide and rich variety of literary methods and formats Bloom utilises means there's something novel and exciting waiting with every turn of the page. A delightful, brave and down to earth memoir that many readers will find hits close to home. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Coronet for an ARC.

[Ross Blocher · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a fan of Rachel Bloom (which I have been since the pre-Crazy-ex-Girlfriend Internet video days - see Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury), then you'll love Rachel being her honest, frenetic, gross-out, sexy, hilarious self in I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are. Yes, the title is a Little Mermaid reference, and if you got that, this is also your book. It is structured like a memoir - we get Rachel's stories of not pooping in a toilet until she was 4, peeks over her prepubescent shoulder at smutty diary entries, bullies at school getting the popular guy to pretend to like her, high school theater, relationships, burgeoning career, marriage, baby - but you never know when a chapter will turn into a letter from her dog, Harry Potter fan-fiction, a musical number (you'll want the audiobook), a vengeful tongue-in-cheek curriculum vitae, the plan for a theme park, or some other random burst of creativity.

Rachel Bloom's stories will make you feel validated, or make you feel normal by comparison, but in the end will leave you remembering that nobody is normal, and that's just as it should be.

[Suzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks NetGalley and Grand Central Pub for the e-copy of this one! Releases in Nov 2020.

I think many people are going to love this memoir-in-essays. However, it fell a little flat for me. This book covered a lot of similar territory to other comedian celebrity memoirs. Rachel discusses how she has always been thought of as a weird person, going through different aspects of herself that she believes separated her from “normal people”: her love of theatre, her inability to fit in at school, her unhealthy relationships, her mental health concerns, her career path. Fans expecting an inside look at Crazy Ex-Girlfriend might be a little disappointed to find that the show is only discussed in the final sections, but some of those essays were great (especially the one where she discusses examples of how they managed to work around FCC censorship guidelines).

The amount of bathroom, masturbation, and mental health jokes probably won’t surprise anybody who has watched her show. Many of her one-liners were really funny, but some of the humor just didn’t land for me. However, if she is recording her own audio, I’m sure she’ll nail the delivery of even the cheesiest lines.

I personally didn’t love the format. She is very open about the hard things in her life, like experiences with bullying in school and the workplace, and her undiagnosed mental health problems in childhood and in her early career. But, even if she was telling us hard things, we might be told the story through fake resumes, musicals, or fairy tales. Sometimes these choices made perfect sense for the topic; other times they felt like gimmicky creative essay prompts.

[Xueting · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely recommend listening to the audiobook narrated by Rachel Bloom herself. Especially to hear her do a variety of different, awesome accents and voices (including her own dog). She’s such a performer! There’s Harry Potter fanfiction (about a theatre club in Hogwarts!) an actual mini musical in here, but if you can’t get the audiobook you can still listen to the musical on Rachel’s website.

This is an honest memoir where she talks about about her experience with OCD and bullies, the bumpy ride of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, her love for theatre and sketch comedy, and ultimately her search for the meaning and value of being normal. I laughed at many parts, and her explanation of OCD is probably the clearest one that helped me understand both what it technically is and what it feels like. There are a few parts of the book (like a long hypothetical imagining of a “smarter” amusement park) that felt like fillers for the sake of displaying her humour and witty ideas. But on the whole the book was more than just mindless entertainment, as I often fear from this kind of comedian memoirs—it was a lot of fun but also insightful and refreshing, and much of what she shared about her anxieties about fitting in resonated with me.

[Bree Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love memoirs. I love memoirs by women. I love memoirs that are funny and don’t take themselves too serious yet still have a message and find a way to bring it all back to that message. This book has that(ish)
I’ve never watched anything this author has been in or written or whatever. But if you have and you’re a fan of hers I think you’ll get ‘it.’ This will be funny and enjoyable for you. I haven’t, so honestly I could see the attempt at being funny and a good time but it didn’t land for me.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

You don't have to be a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fan to enjoy this book but you should probably go ahead and also watch it and stop being an idiot.
Rachel Bloom is so honest and hilarious and- it's a cliche to say it at this point but- I wish she was my best friend so we could have conversations that get way too personal and detailed. But in the meantime, there's this book and it's a perfect placeholder. And while I look forward to all of her future projects, I selfishly hope she enjoyed writing this and we get more books.

[Trin · Rating 4 out of 5]

So there was an attempted coup today and I spent hours and hours and hours glued to the news, and then finally I couldn't watch the news anymore so I read this book, and it was pretty funny and distracting and I thought about other things for a while and only refreshed Twitter every so often instead of every four seconds so that was good. Thanks, book. I am pretty tired now.

[Kathryn S (Metaphors and Miscellanea) · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s funny. It’s weird. It’s occasionally oddly insightful and poignant. Guys, gals, and nonbinary pals, this book is everything I hoped for and then some, a candid testament to the value of honesty and the absolute falseness of the idea that everyone else is normal while you’re just an oddball. From the inimitable Rachel Bloom, creator/star of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and creator of amazing songs/music videos including “Fuck Me Ray Bradbury” and “I Steal Pets,” comes a memoir that I can truly say is unlike any memoir I’ve read to date. It contains some echoes of other fun female-comedian-memoirs like Amy Poehler’s Yes, Please…and then amps up the weirdness to a new, wholly delightful level.

In lieu of a plot summary (because…you know…memoir plots are fairly self-explanatory?) I’ll give you a quick rundown of things included in this bite-size tome:

- Poetry written by Rachel as a child
- A sample resume for theater people
- A guide to dealing with bullies
- A literal map of a hypothetical amusement park
- A short-form musical about Rachel’s experiences in theater growing up (you can listen to all 15 minutes of it on her website, too! Yes, you can even listen now, if you don’t mind spoilers for…uh…her life I guess?)
- Excerpts from childhood-Rachel’s diary
- An “interview” between Rachel at age 23 and Rachel at age 13
- A chapter from the point of view of Rachel’s dog
- A one-question personality quiz
- Explanations of jokes that almost got cut from the script of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for being too dirty
- A complaint about straight men in musical theater
- A Harry Potter fanfic about the Hogwarts Drama Club
- …and so much more!

Rachel Bloom’s life has been marked by intermittent battles with anxiety and OCD, a love of theater that eventually led to her musical-comedy career, feelings of profound isolation, and a deep respect for the creative activity that results from excessive time spent in the bathroom (it’s a whole thing, you’ve just got to read it to understand). This book talks about sex, mental health, Disney, and everything in between. And yet, for all the crazy turns her life has taken, Rachel Bloom has always managed to face the weirdness head-on with a combination of pluck, neuroticism, deflection with humor, and a whole lot of heart.

Rachel Bloom is a highly creative, brilliant comedian who also happens to just be brilliant in generally (like, nerdy-intellectual–maybe that should have been obvious from the fact that, again, she once literally wrote a sort-of-parody song about her deep love of Ray Bradbury). The sheer number of chapter formats she was able to fit into this tiny tome–only 288 pages!–while maintaining quality throughout was impressive to say the least. She managed to weave through thematic threads, especially the idea of “normalcy” and whether that’s even really a thing, while also avoiding the common memoir pitfall of becoming ultra-repetitive.

Rachel’s narrative voice is clear, conversational, and laugh-out-loud hilarious (no, seriously, I laughed audibly quite a few times while reading this one). I think this tone is a perfect fit for this sort of book, where a lot of the stories are cringe-inducing and could be horribly embarrassing if treated too seriously (e.g. bad relationship patterns, sex stuff, the aforementioned bathroom thing). It feels more like a chat with a friend than a lecture from a celebrity, which, you know, I guess is kind of the point. I was also a big fan of her footnotes throughout, sometimes clarifying points but often just adding fun jokes on top of already-comedic tales.

The book also felt very of-this-moment; while a lot of it was written pre-pandemic, the epilogue addressed some more recent events in Rachel’s life, including the birth of her daughter, the death of her long-time friend and cowriter Adam Schlesinger, and the general pervasive unease that has followed us all through the age of COVID-19. After J.K. Rowling’s horrible comments about trans people over the summer, Rachel added a footnote to her Potter fanfic chapter indicating her disagreement with those views, her conflicted feelings about the series in light of it’s author’s behavior, and pointing out that fanfic isn’t official and, therefore, does not give any money to Her Royal TERFiness.

There were only a handful of sections in the book that missed the mark for me. The chapter from the perspective of Rachel’s dog, Wiley, didn’t quite land; it was a good idea and writing style, but using it to tell the story of Rachel winning an Emmy felt forced. The picture of Wiley afterward was so freaking adorable, though. And another chapter, an extended parable about wanting to be liked, dragged on longer than necessary without the payoff that I would expect from a section that took up that many pages. But really, in a book with so many amazing elements, two small missteps hardly tarnish my feelings about the rest of it!

Let’s face it: 2020 has been stressful as heck. I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are is the sort of quick, optimistic, relatable book we need right now to remind us we aren’t alone. It doesn’t shy away from hard topics, but it puts everything in a light acknowledging that things can get better. And, of course, a reminder that normalcy is not just overrated, but nonexistent.

There's a slightly longer version of this review with a bunch of my favorite quotes from it on my BLOG!

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this book via NetGalley! All opinions are my own.

[Katie Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rachel Bloom certainly knows her audience and I happen to very much be that audience. As much as I laughed, I also cried and cringed, with painful recognition just as often. I love her, I get her, I was always going to love this.

[Lizzie Huxley-Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a former (and current) weird kid, I really enjoyed this book. Audiobook particularly great because no one says “fuck” like Rachel Bloom, frankly.

[Rod Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Road trip audiobook!

I'm a big fan of Rachel Bloom's TV show, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, having the songs on constant rotation in my music mix. This book is just as hilarious and cutting as the show, and if you listen to the audiobook you get to hear Bloom put on a short musical about her life and love of musicals. You'll also find Harry Potter fan fiction, childhood diary entries, and lots of amusing and cringe stories about bullying, amusement parks, shapewear, award shows, and bathroom usage.

I need more Bloom in my life.

[Zutto]

I'm super excited for this one! I loved Crazy Ex-girlfriend so much!!

[Ash (Ash's adventures in books) · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a fan of crazy ex girlfriend I was sadly let down by this book

I think I only laughed about twice in this book, which is sad especially how funny the tv show is.

This book was yet another example of the author trying too hard to be funny and using poor toilet humour as a standard for comedy. I feel like that this book is one of those examples where the author uses the fact that they star in a well know comedy to sell a book without actually using the humour that made them well known.

Even as a fan of the tv show, I unfortunately cannot recommend this book to those who adore the show and I suggest you just watch that instead.

[Chandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book definitely had both funny and relatable moments. I think I was expecting it to be a bit more vulnerable or emotional at times, for this reason I really appreciated the addition of the afterword.

[Emmie Marigold · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pure cringe. From the opening of the book she’s gatekeeping being bullied, it doesn’t improve from there. I actually like her less after reading this.

[Jennifer Blankfein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rachel Bloom is funny and talented but I think I am too old to fully relate to some of her references. Harry Potter and amusement parks are not my favorites, and her language was a bit too much for me, but I do love the musical theater and enjoyed the recording that accompanied a chapter. I hadn’t seen Crazy Ex-Girlfriend prior to reading but started the series and believe fans of the show will enjoy her memoir. She suffers from depression and with humor she describes situations throughout her life and how it manifested. A good reminder that nobody is truly “normal” and we all have personal challenges. The afterword at the end of the book was especially moving....I picked up this collection of personal essays thinking it might be a good choice for my book group. Co-creator and star of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Rachel Bloom shares snippets of her life with humor as she explores her feelings of being different from everyone else. Through funny stories, poems, pictures and songs she gives us a glimpse of her journey while discussing mental health, bullying, theater, her tv show and Disney.

As it turned out, the book was not appropriate for my book club (a bit too raunchy for the audience), but nevertheless enjoyable! Although all of her commentary did not spark interest for me, Bloom’s theater references were entertaining. In one essay, a link was provided so readers could listen to her perform, and this was enough to get me to tune in to Netflix for her successful 4 season show once I finished the book. Bloom ends her essay collection with a poignant afterword that speaks to the pandemic, the birth of her daughter, the loss of a friend and the raw emotions of the current time sans humor. Overall this was enjoyable for Rachel Bloom fans, theater buffs and those who don’t feel they fit in and could use a few laughs! For more reviews follow booknationbyjen.com