What do you think?
Rate this book
Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment
What if your parents turned you into a human lab rat on the day you were born? Would that change the story of your life? Would that change who you are?
When Susannah Breslin is a toddler, her parents enroll her in an exclusive laboratory preschool at the University of California, Berkeley, where she becomes one of 128 children who are research subjects in an unprecedented 30-year psychological experiment that predicts who she and her cohort will grow up to be. Decades later, trapped in an abusive marriage to a man with a violent history and battling breast cancer, she starts to wonder how growing up under a microscope shaped the person she became and her life choices. Is she the narrator of the story of her life—or is something else? Already a successful journalist, whose published work has appeared in Forbes, The Atlantic, and Harper’s Bazaar, she decides to make her own curious history the subject of her next investigation and embarks on a life-changing journey that will expose the dark secrets hidden behind the renowned longitudinal study of personality development that she grew up believing knew her better than she knew herself.
Fearlessly vulnerable, unflinchingly raw, and lyrically written, this groundbreaking book is a remarkable account of a woman’s quest to reclaim her voice and an unblinking expose of why we turn out as we do. Data Baby’s story is unlike any other, but its message is universal. Sometimes you have to give up everything you have to become the person you were truly meant to be.
When Susannah Breslin is a toddler, her parents enroll her in an exclusive laboratory preschool at the University of California, Berkeley, where she becomes one of 128 children who are research subjects in an unprecedented 30-year psychological experiment that predicts who she and her cohort will grow up to be. Decades later, trapped in an abusive marriage to a man with a violent history and battling breast cancer, she starts to wonder how growing up under a microscope shaped the person she became and her life choices. Is she the narrator of the story of her life—or is something else? Already a successful journalist, whose published work has appeared in Forbes, The Atlantic, and Harper’s Bazaar, she decides to make her own curious history the subject of her next investigation and embarks on a life-changing journey that will expose the dark secrets hidden behind the renowned longitudinal study of personality development that she grew up believing knew her better than she knew herself.
Fearlessly vulnerable, unflinchingly raw, and lyrically written, this groundbreaking book is a remarkable account of a woman’s quest to reclaim her voice and an unblinking expose of why we turn out as we do. Data Baby’s story is unlike any other, but its message is universal. Sometimes you have to give up everything you have to become the person you were truly meant to be.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published November 7, 2023
44 people are currently reading
6861 people want to read
About the author
Susannah Breslin
4 books35 followersI'm the author of Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 168 reviews
December 6, 2023
TLDR: this is a memoir about Susannah Breslin’s life, not her life in a psychological experiment.
I think this might just be what happens when you make someone who doesn’t want to write a memoir do just that, and the final quarter of Data Baby actually addresses this--Breslin herself explains:
Now, if I were to really dig into this, I might point out that this is tied to a multi-industry issue that certainly didn't start with Breslin, and I can't blame her for taking the book deal despite it not being what she wanted. Memoirs are big right now; female journalists have long been pushed out of the industry or relegated to "women's subjects" and daytime-only work. Or, in this case, writing your nice emotional memoir instead of your investigative journalism piece.
But I digress, and to keep it simple, there isn’t enough here for a good memoir, Breslin didn't want to write it, and she has a strong journalistic style that keeps her at arm’s length from the reader. Not ideal for a memoir.
There are interesting tidbits dropped here and there, but the study and the psychological experiments are tertiary to the deeply uninteresting narrative about a woman who isn’t ready to put herself on display. In-depth discussion of the study is mostly contained to the last 25-ish pages; it turns out that this is because the data was largely disposed of, much of the research that did stem from the study was controversial, and raw data isn't easy for someone with no scientific research experience (Breslin) to decipher. All reasons I think this would have worked better as a journalistic piece possibly discussing the fate of the study, the observer effect, what valuable knowledge did come from the study, how science evolves, etc, rather than a memoir. Breslin wasn’t the “lab rat” the marketing wishes she was.
So naturally, none of the big questions posed on the jacket are given any significant time or really addressed at all, presumably because they aren’t questions Breslin is qualified to answer. She’s undeniably been through a lot in her life, but she comes off as uncertain and still in the process of discovering who she is, not ready to write a memoir about it. She also has this strange habit of over-describing moments/things that throw the narrative off and almost seem to be attempts to keep it away from her, if that makes sense? It happens a few times, but the most glaring was probably when she interrupted a revelation about her abusive marriage with a heavily detailed description of picking up dog poop:
Just…what? This book is only 200 pages long and this is what's making the cut?
I also have to question the publisher’s decision to have the synopsis of this read “trapped in what she feels is an abusive marriage” when her husband is literally shown climbing on top of her and saying “I want to beat the fucking shit out of you” and on another occasion threatening to punch her in the head. Calling that an abusive marriage shouldn't be a "maybe", nor should he be allotted sympathy by the abused person's memoir. I see that this isn't reflected on the Goodreads page and I sincerely hope it was fixed at some point, but it was in the dust jacket of the advance copy I read. I'm disappointed but not surprised it made it that far without someone questioning it.
Overall, this memoir is a hard pass, but I would certainly give Breslin’s journalism a shot.
I think this might just be what happens when you make someone who doesn’t want to write a memoir do just that, and the final quarter of Data Baby actually addresses this--Breslin herself explains:
The publisher didn’t want the book to be journalistic. They wanted it to be a memoir. A memoir was what I didn’t want to write…Their pages were covered in words that had a single mission: to share feelings. I was not especially good at sharing my feelings. I did not particularly want to share my feelings with the world. I would have rather not had feelings at all, had that been an option. I had been taught as a child that feelings were problems that caused upset to other people (my parents). I had spent my life avoiding, squashing, negating my feelings…I suppressed my urge to point out I was a journalist, not a memoirist, and agreed. (p. 195-6)
Now, if I were to really dig into this, I might point out that this is tied to a multi-industry issue that certainly didn't start with Breslin, and I can't blame her for taking the book deal despite it not being what she wanted. Memoirs are big right now; female journalists have long been pushed out of the industry or relegated to "women's subjects" and daytime-only work. Or, in this case, writing your nice emotional memoir instead of your investigative journalism piece.
But I digress, and to keep it simple, there isn’t enough here for a good memoir, Breslin didn't want to write it, and she has a strong journalistic style that keeps her at arm’s length from the reader. Not ideal for a memoir.
There are interesting tidbits dropped here and there, but the study and the psychological experiments are tertiary to the deeply uninteresting narrative about a woman who isn’t ready to put herself on display. In-depth discussion of the study is mostly contained to the last 25-ish pages; it turns out that this is because the data was largely disposed of, much of the research that did stem from the study was controversial, and raw data isn't easy for someone with no scientific research experience (Breslin) to decipher. All reasons I think this would have worked better as a journalistic piece possibly discussing the fate of the study, the observer effect, what valuable knowledge did come from the study, how science evolves, etc, rather than a memoir. Breslin wasn’t the “lab rat” the marketing wishes she was.
So naturally, none of the big questions posed on the jacket are given any significant time or really addressed at all, presumably because they aren’t questions Breslin is qualified to answer. She’s undeniably been through a lot in her life, but she comes off as uncertain and still in the process of discovering who she is, not ready to write a memoir about it. She also has this strange habit of over-describing moments/things that throw the narrative off and almost seem to be attempts to keep it away from her, if that makes sense? It happens a few times, but the most glaring was probably when she interrupted a revelation about her abusive marriage with a heavily detailed description of picking up dog poop:
I wasn’t a failure, a fuckup, a bad wife. I was the result of signals and messages, covert and overt, that had reshaped who I was into someone I did not want to be. Bending over so far backward to please a man that I had thought my spine would crack, expecting less for myself, discerning my needs were less important than someone else’s.
The dog squatted over the grass, excreting a turd, panting with the effort of elimination. This was more than a personal story. It was a psychological experiment of my own, one in which I was my own research subject. I pulled a plastic bag over my hand, snagged the warm dog poop, and tied the bag’s top into a knot. I scampered back into the house. (p. 139)
Just…what? This book is only 200 pages long and this is what's making the cut?
I also have to question the publisher’s decision to have the synopsis of this read “trapped in what she feels is an abusive marriage” when her husband is literally shown climbing on top of her and saying “I want to beat the fucking shit out of you” and on another occasion threatening to punch her in the head. Calling that an abusive marriage shouldn't be a "maybe", nor should he be allotted sympathy by the abused person's memoir. I see that this isn't reflected on the Goodreads page and I sincerely hope it was fixed at some point, but it was in the dust jacket of the advance copy I read. I'm disappointed but not surprised it made it that far without someone questioning it.
Overall, this memoir is a hard pass, but I would certainly give Breslin’s journalism a shot.
December 27, 2023
This is not successful in exploring Breslin’s participation in a psychological study nor as a memoir.
August 31, 2023
The premise of the book caught my attention-a longitudinal study of a child's life into adulthood as the now adult looks back and wants to delve deeper into their research into her own life to find out if her "life" was in fact predicted by the study! The pacing of the book flowed well and kept me interested, and I liked how the author really explained all of the tests, exams, etc. that she remembered throughout the process. Her life was colorful and interesting-but was this a product of trauma experienced as a child through her mother's behaviors towards her? I also enjoyed seeing the trajectory of her life as an adult, the experiences she endured in her marriage and in her career and how she handled them, speculating on how the study influenced her decisions unconsciously. Another effect to be considered is how even being involved in an experiment like this could ultimately shape someone into thinking they're special or even on a "stage" of sorts, and the author discusses this throughout the book as well. I really enjoyed this memoir, and think anybody interested in psychology who enjoys modern biographies would like this book. Thanks, NetGalley and Publisher for the ARC!
Read
November 5, 2024DNF. Maybe I'll come back to this one later.
December 17, 2023
This book's marketing promised to tell the story of the author's time in a "psychological experiment," but what we learn about the experiment is incredibly facile. We instead learn about her life, her career and her failed marriage. It felt like the frame of the study she'd been in as a child helped her get a book deal, but she failed to obtain more material on what it was or what it meant than would fill a decent-length magazine story. That has left this book feeling seriously padded and oversold. Disappointing.
November 8, 2023
I overall enjoyed the book but felt like it was misrepresented. At the end of the book, the author says she didn't want to write a memoir but that's what the publisher wanted. I felt like it wasn't advertised as a memoir but that's what it was. Her story was interesting and learning about the Block Study was something new, but it did not feel like there was a conclusion to it all. I know she mentions it a little in the last chapter that a lot of the data had been tossed and no life changing conclusions had been reached from the data but it doesn't seem like the process of researching this helped Breslin find any conclusions. The ending also came out of nowhere. The whole book is about Breslin's life and experience being a part of a longitudinal study. But at the end, all of a sudden its about Big Brother and how technology is mining all of our data. Its an interesting idea but I wish she had brought it up earlier if that was the argument she wanted to make
November 18, 2023
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. While I enjoyed the writing, I spent most of the time wondering when the experiment would become the baseline of the story. It never really does, she goes into detail about her life and has a nice banter to her writing but I feel like I was baited, I was intrigued to learn about this experiment she grew up in and it was only a thing mentioned here and there and with little detail.
September 20, 2023
Breslin very much achieved her goal of the writing style being of a memoir (as well as the passion and overall vibe of her work as a journalist) and I very much appreciated that
the biggest complaint I have is with the way in which she explains certain references to other pieces of media because it felt like I was being talked down to. for example, she mentions the Truman Show at one point and briefly explains the plot - but anyone reading it, especially who has not seen the movie or is not familiar with it, could Google it. it's a little thing, but it aggravated me every time it happened.
overall, this was a good memoir and i felt like she worked hard to get as close that she could get to the truth, both using what she has of her own memories but also the data she was able to find from her research. AND she spent energy and time talking about where those memories (as well as the data) may have faltered.
i would recommend, especially to those interested in the genre of memoir as well as those who are excited by the book's description
Thank you to Netgalley for providing me a free and advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
the biggest complaint I have is with the way in which she explains certain references to other pieces of media because it felt like I was being talked down to. for example, she mentions the Truman Show at one point and briefly explains the plot - but anyone reading it, especially who has not seen the movie or is not familiar with it, could Google it. it's a little thing, but it aggravated me every time it happened.
overall, this was a good memoir and i felt like she worked hard to get as close that she could get to the truth, both using what she has of her own memories but also the data she was able to find from her research. AND she spent energy and time talking about where those memories (as well as the data) may have faltered.
i would recommend, especially to those interested in the genre of memoir as well as those who are excited by the book's description
Thank you to Netgalley for providing me a free and advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
January 31, 2024
Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment is a provocative and poignant memoir about journalist Susannah Breslin’s experiences as a “lab rat” in a lifelong psychological study and her pursuit to reclaim autonomy as an adult. In her memoir, she explains that her father was an English professor at UC Berkeley. The university ran a preschool where 128 kids were studied for thirty years to figure out if you could predict who that child would grow up to be. At the time, there was a question about whether personality traits were real. The only way to determine if personality remained relatively stable was by following people from childhood into adulthood.
As a psychology major, I found this book fascinating, balancing non-fiction and memoir. The author delves into the experiment, but it's not all science. She also goes into a lot of her personal life. In one part, she says, "I had all the trappings of the good life, a house, a partner, a BMW in a three-car garage, and once I had those things, I didn't want to lose them. For decades, I had struggled to take care of myself. It was hard to picture giving up everything. You'll be fine, I could hear some wiser of me telling myself. I knew if I left my husband, I could take care of myself, but what if the breast cancer came back? Better the devil you know than the devil you don't, I considered, but what if the devil kills me? So far, my husband had only threatened to hit me, but what if he did? What then?" Despite her trials, the author’s takeaway from her investigation into the study she’d been part of is that there is something about people beyond science and unquantifiable. I certainly like to think I am something more than a bucket of data. Baby Data is an honest and fearless story of reclaiming control.
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://www.momsdonthavetimetoreadboo...
As a psychology major, I found this book fascinating, balancing non-fiction and memoir. The author delves into the experiment, but it's not all science. She also goes into a lot of her personal life. In one part, she says, "I had all the trappings of the good life, a house, a partner, a BMW in a three-car garage, and once I had those things, I didn't want to lose them. For decades, I had struggled to take care of myself. It was hard to picture giving up everything. You'll be fine, I could hear some wiser of me telling myself. I knew if I left my husband, I could take care of myself, but what if the breast cancer came back? Better the devil you know than the devil you don't, I considered, but what if the devil kills me? So far, my husband had only threatened to hit me, but what if he did? What then?" Despite her trials, the author’s takeaway from her investigation into the study she’d been part of is that there is something about people beyond science and unquantifiable. I certainly like to think I am something more than a bucket of data. Baby Data is an honest and fearless story of reclaiming control.
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://www.momsdonthavetimetoreadboo...
January 20, 2024
I have mixed feelings around this one. The book is very clearly marketed around the question of exploring if being in a study since early childhood has an impact on your life and who you ultimately become. It's clearly an engaging premise and research question, which sets the stage for what the Block study was.
I think where reviewing this memoir for me gets tricky is the fact that while this book is in fact a memoir, it doesn't quite follow what it's marketed as. I think Breslin is a good writer; I flew threw reading this and found it easy to follow. However, I really thought that there would be more background on the study itself framing or at least sprinkled throughout, especially given what we learn near the end of the book about her getting a fellowship based on investigative reporting. It really felt like we got the bare minimum of background on the study throughout the book, which is a shame. This book felt like it had a lot of opportunities for deeper insight or ways to integrate her investigative work into her life narrative (for example, interviewing folks involved in the study or reflecting on articles or data she read, and then connecting it to her own big picture).
While Breslin does repeatedly ask the question of how being in the study impacted her life and her choices, I don't think she ever really got deep enough into it here. Honestly, she'd probably have gotten more out of going to therapy in understanding this question, as opposed to trying to find something to explain or root her life story in as she reviewed the data she was investigating. As the name suggests, she very much looked into the data part of her story, but less about what you do when you have said data - the analysis and looking at what the data suggests.
Overall, I think this isn't a bad memoir, but it was a little confusing to pick up the book thinking it was one thing and then ending up somewhat randomly reading a memoir about someone I otherwise have no knowledge of. It was also a little disheartening to read near the end that Breslin also didn't really want to turn her work into a memoir. It kind of made me regret investing my own time reading this.
I think where reviewing this memoir for me gets tricky is the fact that while this book is in fact a memoir, it doesn't quite follow what it's marketed as. I think Breslin is a good writer; I flew threw reading this and found it easy to follow. However, I really thought that there would be more background on the study itself framing or at least sprinkled throughout, especially given what we learn near the end of the book about her getting a fellowship based on investigative reporting. It really felt like we got the bare minimum of background on the study throughout the book, which is a shame. This book felt like it had a lot of opportunities for deeper insight or ways to integrate her investigative work into her life narrative (for example, interviewing folks involved in the study or reflecting on articles or data she read, and then connecting it to her own big picture).
While Breslin does repeatedly ask the question of how being in the study impacted her life and her choices, I don't think she ever really got deep enough into it here. Honestly, she'd probably have gotten more out of going to therapy in understanding this question, as opposed to trying to find something to explain or root her life story in as she reviewed the data she was investigating. As the name suggests, she very much looked into the data part of her story, but less about what you do when you have said data - the analysis and looking at what the data suggests.
Overall, I think this isn't a bad memoir, but it was a little confusing to pick up the book thinking it was one thing and then ending up somewhat randomly reading a memoir about someone I otherwise have no knowledge of. It was also a little disheartening to read near the end that Breslin also didn't really want to turn her work into a memoir. It kind of made me regret investing my own time reading this.
October 22, 2023
Well written, raw memoir about a women who participated (was unaware) in a longitudinal psychological experiment.
This memoir explores the effects this study has had on her life, her battle with cancer and her life choices as a result of her upbringing. An interesting take on nature versus nurture and personality.
Thank you to Legacy Lit for this complimentary copy.
This memoir explores the effects this study has had on her life, her battle with cancer and her life choices as a result of her upbringing. An interesting take on nature versus nurture and personality.
Thank you to Legacy Lit for this complimentary copy.
August 19, 2024
This was absolutely not what I expected.
Life takes twists and turns that we can rarely foresee, but does our childhood inform the path of our future? It was endlessly interesting to me to read a first hand account of an individual who was a member of such a long form study on human life.
Life takes twists and turns that we can rarely foresee, but does our childhood inform the path of our future? It was endlessly interesting to me to read a first hand account of an individual who was a member of such a long form study on human life.
February 5, 2024
Susannah Breslin's memoir is written within the context of her experience in the Block Longitudinal Study. This psychological study began at UC Berkeley's Child Study Center where she attended preschool. Afterwards, she was tracked every two or three years into her 30's to determine if analyzing the personality of a 4-year-old can result in a reasonable prediction of what that person will be like as an adult: personality, occupation, economic status, morality, belief system. While Breslin's life story is interesting, she fails to come to any conclusions on the results of the study. Only about five pages of the book are devoted to possible findings of the experiment. (Instead, she includes an unnecessary detailed graphic chapter on her journalism covering the porn industry.) The title - Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment - gives the impression this will be a book informing a reader of the effects of a research study on a child's life, as well as what psychological findings that experiment gleaned. Unfortunately, neither topics are successfully developed.
November 23, 2023
The author has seriously bad decision making skills. Their life has been made more difficult by the choices they made, but yet they are searching for an external cause to their self imposed suffering. Sure environment affects us, but as adults we choose our environment and choose how we approach problem solving. Your childhood affects who you become, but everyone must assume responsibility for their decisions lest they become a self fulfulling phrophecy.
The tumor baby would have been better as a passing metaphor rather than an actual plot point. I could have done without the paragraph focused on the minute details of picking up dog poop whilst the author was pondering. Also the part where the author describes how much they did not want to write a memior, this memior, and then tells you all the things they wrote in the memior, the memior you just read.
The writing conveys indifference. This is a lesson in how not to write a book to envoke sympathy or empathy.
The tumor baby would have been better as a passing metaphor rather than an actual plot point. I could have done without the paragraph focused on the minute details of picking up dog poop whilst the author was pondering. Also the part where the author describes how much they did not want to write a memior, this memior, and then tells you all the things they wrote in the memior, the memior you just read.
The writing conveys indifference. This is a lesson in how not to write a book to envoke sympathy or empathy.
January 24, 2024
This was a boring and disjointed personal narrative sprinkled with unnecessary explicit content. It only briefly covered the topic of the research she was part of as a child.
March 18, 2024
Fascinating story, although the title is potentially misleading—the psychological study is more of a backdrop to Breslin's life than it is a focus of the memoir. And past childhood, the study is pretty remote, and also completely voluntary. I get the sense Breslin used the study largely to grab people's attention and as a lens through which she could analyze her life, which I feel distracts from the fact that her life is intriguing independent of the study. Ignore the attempt at using the study to connect the events of Breslin's life, and this is a great read, with plenty of unpredictable turns and meditations on nature vs. nurture, children's relationships to their parents, approaches to self-analysis... oh yeah, and the porn industry.
September 1, 2023
Breslin holds nothing back in this page-turner of a memoir that offers a peek behind the curtains of a famous psychological study. Brutally honest, funny, smart, a woman's story about what it feels like to be told you're special by the scientists studying you, while being ignored by the parents who should believe you are.
June 21, 2024
Interesting concept but overall not for me.
Read
March 5, 2025💭DNF
I wanted to love this. I really did. The premise sounded so intriguing. Realizing you were a part of a 30 year research experiment from the moment you were born. How it affected your life. I hate to rate this because it is a memoir but this was her experience. I wanted to hear more about the psychological experiment. As I skimmed I learned she didn’t want to write a memoir but that is what her publisher pushed for. She wanted a more journalistic approach. It shows she wasn’t happy with how she was made to tell the story.
I wanted to love this. I really did. The premise sounded so intriguing. Realizing you were a part of a 30 year research experiment from the moment you were born. How it affected your life. I hate to rate this because it is a memoir but this was her experience. I wanted to hear more about the psychological experiment. As I skimmed I learned she didn’t want to write a memoir but that is what her publisher pushed for. She wanted a more journalistic approach. It shows she wasn’t happy with how she was made to tell the story.
April 28, 2024
Not what I expected the book to be upon first picking it up, but I did enjoy reading Breslin’s memoir. I’m surprised the publishers didn’t want Breslin to go the investigative route with this, but it seems they chose to still market it that way anyways.
November 13, 2023
Okay so first off, I really enjoyed this!!! This is my favorite type of nonfiction to read because I just love hearing people’s stories and learning about their lives.
But. I do wish the author had been able to write this story ~as she’d intended. Because while I do enjoy hearing people’s stories, with the way this book is pitched, I was interested in the study and because the author had to write this as a memoir to get the book deal, the study almost felt like an afterthought?
Breslin has lead a really wild life and I definitely enjoyed hearing about it but my favorite bit of this was the last third, where the study was covered.
It sounds like a lot more research went into that that she wasn’t able to include in the book. I would’ve loved some more in-depth info, particularly interviews with other subjects!
Personally, I am a huge fan of journalistic nonfiction and I would’ve loved to read that approach. So I’m sad that she wasn’t able to write the book as she’d intended as I think I would’ve enjoyed that a little more.
However this was a fantastic read and I may or may not have talked it out with three people as soon as I finished. So even though it wasn’t quite the ~style I would’ve preferred, I would still highly recommend this!
Thank you to Legacy Lit Books and Grand Central Publishing for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review!
But. I do wish the author had been able to write this story ~as she’d intended. Because while I do enjoy hearing people’s stories, with the way this book is pitched, I was interested in the study and because the author had to write this as a memoir to get the book deal, the study almost felt like an afterthought?
Breslin has lead a really wild life and I definitely enjoyed hearing about it but my favorite bit of this was the last third, where the study was covered.
It sounds like a lot more research went into that that she wasn’t able to include in the book. I would’ve loved some more in-depth info, particularly interviews with other subjects!
Personally, I am a huge fan of journalistic nonfiction and I would’ve loved to read that approach. So I’m sad that she wasn’t able to write the book as she’d intended as I think I would’ve enjoyed that a little more.
However this was a fantastic read and I may or may not have talked it out with three people as soon as I finished. So even though it wasn’t quite the ~style I would’ve preferred, I would still highly recommend this!
Thank you to Legacy Lit Books and Grand Central Publishing for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review!
July 31, 2024
Where to start? I picked this book up from a recommendation of a book club on Instagram. I've picked other recommendations from that club before and had never been let down. This group of pages that turned out to be a "book" had me thinking: How could a publisher go along with this and make it a book?"
This had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the so-called Psychological Experiment. It was more of a personal diary with a mixture of a rant.
I'm so disappointed that I spent money on this book and also time. I'm sure there's better authors out here waiting for their shot at fame that have a much better book than this.
Do yourself a favor, skip this book unless you want to read about a woman with Mommy and Daddy Issues, had cancer, and a failed marriage.
This had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the so-called Psychological Experiment. It was more of a personal diary with a mixture of a rant.
I'm so disappointed that I spent money on this book and also time. I'm sure there's better authors out here waiting for their shot at fame that have a much better book than this.
Do yourself a favor, skip this book unless you want to read about a woman with Mommy and Daddy Issues, had cancer, and a failed marriage.
August 15, 2023
This book had potential to be a good story, but it just fell flat for me. The premise of being studied from a small child through adulthood is really interesting to me, but this “memoir” missed the mark and was just not very good. I struggled to get through it because the writer seemed kind of detached from her own life story and the whole childhood study didn’t seem to have much of an impact on her mostly depressing, and quite frankly, boring life.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me read this digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me read this digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.
February 11, 2024
I kept wondering when the book I was expecting -- a deep dive into the study and the experience of being in the study -- would start, but it never got there. Close to the end the author mentioned that she didn't want to write a memoir, but it was the only way to get a book deal. That explained a lot about the preceding pages, but if she didn't even want to write it, why should we want to read it?
February 20, 2024
This was a miss for me. The author has an interesting life story for sure but it's really not about what the book is marketed/titled and so it's really hard to judge this book. The writing can be very flowery (the description of what she was wearing/what her mom was wearing on the first day of daycare almost caused me to stop reading...it went on for so long) but can be very tight at other times. Overall, I can't say I totally got this one.
December 3, 2023
1.5 stars. Directionless and lacking thematically
January 6, 2024
I wanted to hear more about the Block Study, but this was a memoir about someone I knew nothing about and I wasn’t interested in her sex stories. Oh well…
dnf
October 15, 2024DNF @ 17%. Honestly, I picked this up expecting it to focus a lot more on the psychological experiment of it all. I just don't have the patience for a memoir where the author doesn't want to be writing that. I've seen from other reviews that she outright states as much but frankly, you can tell from this deep in that a memoir was the last thing she wanted to write. We could have done her and this book a favor by letting it be a journalistic piece.
I know the experiment probably has a whole paper maybe even several that the researchers wrote about their results, and I'm certain if I spent a little time trolling through Academic Search Complete I could find it, but it's been enough years since my last psych class that I want someone else to have read the methods and analysis section and then cut out all the jargon. That's what I wanted this book to be and while it's probably unfair of me to expect that, I think it is fair to want a little bit more than what I got.
I know the experiment probably has a whole paper maybe even several that the researchers wrote about their results, and I'm certain if I spent a little time trolling through Academic Search Complete I could find it, but it's been enough years since my last psych class that I want someone else to have read the methods and analysis section and then cut out all the jargon. That's what I wanted this book to be and while it's probably unfair of me to expect that, I think it is fair to want a little bit more than what I got.
Read
November 28, 2023Not rating this one since it's an incredibly personal memoir. Breslin is an excellent writer, and I would have loved to read something more journalistic about her and others' experiments in the study, as the marketing copy describes. However, this book is more straight memoir, so know that going in. Breslin even highlights this toward the end, commenting that the publisher wanted a memoir, not a journalistic piece, so I would have loved to read what Breslin originally wanted to write and would love more perspectives from those who went through the study with her. Excellent writing, not billed correctly by publisher for what it was.
April 5, 2024
3 stars
This memoir details the life experiences of the author and her experience with the Block Project. She recounts her experience during the study, and how that may or may not have affected her life after the study.
I listened to this audiobook, and while it was interesting, some parts did not hold my attention. It was an interesting perspective to hear the story of someone who was actually a research subject in a longitudinal study.
I would recommend this to anyone interested in research, especially those involving humans and psychology.
This memoir details the life experiences of the author and her experience with the Block Project. She recounts her experience during the study, and how that may or may not have affected her life after the study.
I listened to this audiobook, and while it was interesting, some parts did not hold my attention. It was an interesting perspective to hear the story of someone who was actually a research subject in a longitudinal study.
I would recommend this to anyone interested in research, especially those involving humans and psychology.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 168 reviews