Everything Is Going to Be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour – A Hilarious Comedy Memoir of Youthful Travel, Growing Pains, and Sharp Humor

by Rachel Shukert

Everything Is Going to Be Great, is performer, playwright, comedian, and author Rachel Shukert’s hilarious memoir of traveling through Europe in her twenties. She chronicles her youthful navigation through the haphazard fun and debauchery of new freedoms, and the growing pains that ultimately accompany “adulthood.” Fans of Sloane Crosley and David Sedaris are going to love Shulkert’s story, and her sharp, smart humor.

Genres: Travel, Memoir, Nonfiction, Humor, Biography, Biography Memoir, Book Club

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Rachel Shukert is the author the the critically acclaimed memoirs Everything Is Going To Be Great and Have You No Shame? Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including Salon, McSweeney's, Slate, Gawker, the Daily Beast, Heeb, and Nerve, and been featured on National Public RAdio. She has also contributed to a variety of anthologies, including Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists and Best American Erotic Poetry: 1800 to the Present.

Rachel is also a contributing editor at Tablet Magazine, and an alumnus of Ars Nova's illustrious Play Group. She received a BFA from Tisch School of the Arts, and now lives in New York City with her husband Ben and her bipolar cat, Anjelica Huston.

Reviews

[Anni · Rating 5 out of 5]

These cautionary tales of a young American woman on a raunchy romp of one-night stands with dubious men is a new take on the innocent abroad. The lurid details of her sexual exploits in Amsterdam and Vienna are at times buttock-clenchingly frank, but the vulgar and sometimes irreverent anecdotes are rendered highly entertaining by her self-deprecating acerbic Jewish humour. Probably not suitable material for a book group, though!

Read and reviewed for Whichbook.net

[Felice · Rating 3 out of 5]

If Eat, Pray, Love were written by David Sedaris:

A. It would have been interesting.
B. It would have been 108% less annoying and 127% less preachy.
C. It would be Everything Is Going To Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour

Can you be under thirty and publish the second volume of your memoirs? You can if you're the super funny Rachel Shukert. In her first book Have You Know Shame and Other Regrettable Stories, Shukert took us as far as the start of her life at NYU. In her new book Everything Is Going To Be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour, she has finished her degree, broken up with a boyfriend and gotten a job. The job is a part in a play. She has no lines in the play and will not get paid for not reciting any lines but the play and it's company are going to Vienna so she will get a great trip out of it.

Everything is a very modern coming of age biography. That is if you are going to age from 18 to 46 in a matter of weeks. There are lovers, threesomes, enough liquor to float the Titanic back to the surface, Nazi's, dentists, sociopaths, skinny Santas with black face wearing elves and even eating mustard from squeeze tubes. My, my, my. Rachel Shukert how do you face your Mom and Dad after this?

What will volume 3 of Shukert's autobiography bring? I hope more of the same. More of the same over the top, across the edge, over the river and through the woods wicked mayhem. Like all good humorists and memoirists, Shukert can have you giggling at her off color stories one minute and sighing over the poignancy the next. She's honest enough to show herself at her worst and writes well enough so that you care. This book is a crack up. Just go buy it already and busy loving the guilty pleasure of it all.

[bethanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won this book off of Goodreads' First-reads and I had such high expectations when I got this book. I thought "Hmmm......a girl fresh out of college goes overseas on a theater tour only to find herself....interesting!" Boy was I wrong.

This book was a little bit of a struggle to get through. I know right away when I like a book, I'll want to keep going. Here, I had to struggle to not put down the book after the first chapter. The way that Shukert uses humor to diffuse the story that she's telling in chapters comes across as forced and the antidotes spread throughout the chapters do nothing but provide unnecessary distractions. I really wanted to LIKE this book. But I couldn't.

Maybe because it reminded me so much of the Chuck Klosterman-style of writing that I loathed so much earlier this year that turned me off to this book. Who knows? I would have much preferred the story the way it's written without the cute doodles, stupid chapter-related distractions or anything else for that matter. I guess in the world where for one Anthony Bourdain, there's a million Chuck Klostermans that just don't seem up my alley.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you've ever dreamed of traveling to Europe with no money or any real idea of how you are going to live, this is the book for you. If you have a young daughter who wants to do that, do not read this book, it will scare the hell out of you.

Subtitled An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour, Shukert recounts her many adventures traveling around Europe, first as the member of an acting troupe with a sketchy agenda, and then on her own, courtesy of an unstamped passport which allowed her to travel unfettered throughout Europe.

Shukert is a very funny, albeit somewhat vulgar, writer. I read this on the city bus traveling around Manhattan and found myself keeping the book as closed as possible so as not to offend any Upper East Side matrons who may be trying to sneak a peek at what I was reading.

She writes very freely of her many sexual exploits, which often coincided with her drinking to excess. One really crazy night had her doing her best to avoid participating in a three-way with some very scary, excitable Italian men she did not know well. It was a scene a young, Jewish Lucy Riccardo might find herself in, all that was missing was Ethel, and Shukert had me laughing like crazy as she described extricating herself from this potentially dangerous situation.

I loved her mother, whose favorite pastime was to send Rachel "large manila envelopes containing scraps of information that she feels need to be brought to my attention: notices culled from the local newspaper reporting that my high school boyfriend has once again been imprisoned for car theft; excerpts from the latest sermon torn from the synagogue bulletin; photocopied magazine articles detailing gruesome diseases from which she believes I might be at risk."

On one card, her mom wrote- "Remember- having multiple sexual partners significantly increases your immediate risk of developing cancer of the cervix. Please consider." Hilarious!

Shukert includes in the text helpful tips for living abroad, including what to do "When Someone Mistakes You For a Prostitute", "Are You About to Be Sex-trafficked?" and "Snappy Comebacks To Loaded Questions" such as
1. Why are Americans so fat?
2. Are Americans religious because they are stupid, or just ignorant? and
3. Why do Americans cruelly refuse to provide public health care for all?

There is lots of heart in this memoir, and I liked Shukert's adventures in Amsterdam, living with her friends, Jeroen and Mattis. She gives the reader a good flavor for what it is like living in a foreign city: the loneliness, the difficulty in getting a job, the joy of riding a bike as a means of transportation.

Everything Will Be Great will appeal to mostly a younger crowd, and for those lucky enough to have traveled to Europe, they will chuckle with recognition.

[Lynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a 99-cent book on itunes goes, it was OK. I was hopeful at the beginning, which had some laugh-out-loud moments, but the irreverent writing style soon wore thin when there was little actual substance. I didn't find Rachel to be likeable or relatable - I guess because I was capable of making better decisions in my early teens than she was in her twenties. After awhile, it just got tiring.

I wasn't offended by the language or humor, which I'm assuming is why a lot of people gave it low reviews. I have a vocabulary like a pirate and no issues with crudeness, it's just that if your witty sarcasm isn't used to make a point, after awhile it loses its wit. It was somewhat entertaining, and perhaps if I had read it off-and-on while on a vacation and didn't give it my full attention it would have been more likeable to me. There were a few spots at the end where again I chuckled aloud, but the pages in between I just kept waiting for Rachel to wise up and something interesting to happen.

The author finds redemption in the end, in the form of a good relationship, which almost doesn't seem fitting given her independence. But we hear so much more about the unsuitable suitor than the keeper, so there's not much emotional payoff there. The ending feels rushed, the middle feels never ending.

The book feels less like an European adventure and more like the author overstayed her welcome with her current group of friends, so she had to find a new group of people to hang out with. The location seems to not be that important to her which is a shame as the best parts of this book for me were the descriptions of Amsterdam. She seems to have little interest in immersing herself in the culture of the place she lives, and it is only through her acquaintances' prompting that she does anything to interact or integrate with her temporary home.

Like another reviewer I think her writing shone more when she was just being real and not recounting another embarrassing evening of drunkenness and clumsy sex. The fantasy sitcom she creates is the best example of that.

[Erynn]

Hilarious. Here's a peek. "Amsterdam can be an impossible place to navigate...The only foolproof way to get anywhere is ask a native for directions, which they are usually happy to provide. But this too poses a difficulty, because the names of Dutch streets are, to a native English speaker, completely impenetrable...a street name can easily have more than twenty letters, which, I'm sure you'll agree, is completely f*cking ridiculous...Therefore, the best solution is simply to pronounce the unpronounceable by substituting the unfamiliar words with familiar English look-alikes. The results are informative and often amusing. Laurierdwarsstraat=Laurie's a Dwarf Street; Weteringplantsoen=Watering Plants, Son; Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal=New Side for Burgers, Y'all."

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Less a travel memoir and more a sex/sexual encounter memoir. I'm not a prude and I love this genre, but this book was just a little too self-indulgent for my taste. The tone is humorous and the pacing is good, but overall the book didn't do it for me. The people who love this appear (via other reviews) to love exactly what I did not.

[Khloe Katz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I see so much of my current self in Rachel Shukert's memoirs. Hopefully someday I'll also find myself being saved from a downward spiral in Amsterdam by a South African NJB. Very fitting that I read this right around my first trip to said city. Thank you, Jane! The future seems a little brighter.

[Caitlin Constantine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lately the publishing world has seen fit to gift us with a subgenre of memoir written by youngish American lady performers as they detail their sexual escapades and the ridiculous partners with whom they engaged in said sexcapades. I have read at least half a dozen of them (although I have yet to indulge in their converse, the ones about religious ladies who struggle to keep both faith and hymen intact as they brave the Big City) and for the most part I find them disappointing. For me the nadir of this subgenre has to be the books written by Chelsea Handler, and I know this is sacrilegious among many of my friends, but she is someone who thinks she's being outrageously funny when really she's just a big asshole.

On the other hand, I actually laughed out loud - multiple times, even! - while reading this book. I've written in the past about the difficulties of finding a book that transcends the merely humorous and becomes legitimately riotous - the medium makes it way more challenging than if you are, say, on TV or in a movie or something. Yet Shukert is such a funny, self-deprecating writer that I actually had moments where I had to put my book down because I was shaking so hard from laughter that trying to read my book would have been like trying to read while riding a roller coaster or an earthquake or something. I'm sure my fellow pool-goers thought I was having some sort of fit or something. I am not sure what I laughed at harder - her riff on the Dutch love affair with Phil Collins or the extremely expensive Dutch health care she received. (I'll divulge no further because I want you to actually read this book.)

Aside from the considerable hilarity, there is also the fact that Shukert is a beautiful writer with a gift for metaphor and description and dialogue - you know, all of the elements that make for an excellent read. Some passages - some sentences, even - wrapped themselves around my chest and squeezed hard. The whole "funny memoir" thing can sometimes feel forced, like you are reading someone's extended stand-up comedy monologue, and you don't really get the sense of a person with a beating heart behind the words. I think that's what pushed this book over from "liked a lot" to "loved" for me - that Shukert wasn't just content to splay her stories out on a blanket for us to peruse as we walked by, that she actually wanted to make us feel something.

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know that “friend” you have who’s a complete fuck-up and tells the funniest stories about the debacle that is her life? She isn’t a real friend, someone you’d trust with your spare keys, for instance, or to console you when tragedy strikes, but she’s oh so much fun to be around. Now imagine that friend went to Europe for a year and has just called to dish the dirt. That’s Rachel Shukert’s memoir in a nutshell. You’ll laugh when she reveals that the Dutch don’t believe in lactose-intolerance or seasonal allergies. You’ll chuckle as she attempts to exchange sex for dental work. You’ll guffaw when she accidentally falls in love with a charming sociopath. But when the laughter is over, you’ll forget the whole conversation in about twenty minutes.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Eat Pray Love for the cynical fun-haver. No spiritual mumbo jumbo here, thank god. Just loads of cocktails, misadventures with horny foreigners, and a whole lot of laughs. Finished it in one day and not because it was a light read—because I couldn't put it down. Oh, and even more evidence that Christopher Hitchens is full of shit because this broad is high-larious!

[Laurie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was only until the final third that I was really even interested Shukert's story.

[Rachel Stevenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Travels With My Cant. Beer and (Self) Loathing in Europe. Meat, Pay, Fuck.

Once upon a time, there was a TV show called Smash, which was about the production of a Broadway musical about the life of Marilyn Monroe. It only lasted two seasons but part of the joy of watching it was reading the snarky reviews of one Ms Rachel Shukert on vulture.com. When it ended and she moved onto other things (including writing for Glow), I wanted to read more by her and was pleased to discover she’d written a humorous travelogue about her grand tour to Europe. I love a humorous travelogue and there aren’t many written by women. Female travel writers tend to be more serious, maybe out of necessity.

However this isn’t really a travel book, it’s more a memoir of a hot mess in her early twenties in the early 2000s travelling from Amsterdam to Zurich (it's more of a petit tour than a grand one), drinking too much and sleeping with unsuitable men (she doesn’t ever really seem to fancy these fellows, just goes to bed with them because she can’t think of a reason why not). Her younger self is a bit exhausting; she is, in modern parlance, A Lot, but she is ultimately likeable, and you want the happy ending (not *that* kind of happy ending) that she eventually ends up with.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rachel Shukert has a unique gift. It's not her talent for writing which is remarkably smart and witty, nor her skill in theater. It's her exceptional perception of herself and her ability to keenly expose both the admirable and the despicable aspects of herself. That she does so without the use of apologies and without a shred of youthful conceit gives her memoir, Everything Is Going to Be Great another leg up.

Both happenstance and serendipity find Rachel living in Europe. An unstamped passport allows her the freedom to settle down, in what she insists is not an exercise in “finding herself” (spoiler: it totally is an exercise in finding herself) Part confessional, part travelogue, all acerbic, Everything Is Going to Be Great is more than what you expect for a memoir by someone so young (it’s her SECOND! And she’s under 30!)and chock full of more information about Rachel than you could possibly ever need. She leaves no blemish concealed.

For every misguided decision that made me shake my head and click my tongue, there were other time when I mentally applauded Rachel for her ability to be so forthcoming. Once, when her college provided psychiatrist suggested that perhaps she was afraid of her own success, after Rachel cast out a rather detailed list of some loathsome traits, she said:

Here is a list of things I am afraid of: elephants flying, terrorists, sexually transmitted diseases, credit card statements, Poles, ballet teachers, and failure, which is generally agreed to be the opposite of success. Unless you’re trying to practice some sort of reverse psychology on me, in which case you can go and fuck yourself.

Go fuck yourself, indeed.

In addition to exposing more than an eHarmony profiles worth of details, Everything Is Going to Be Great will also teach you a thing or two. Scattered throughout the book are self help segments and tasty morsels of humor, their additions like natural tangents to the conversation you are rapt in, small asides to Rachel’s tales of love and woe and “whoa no’s"!

Foreskin FAQs
Snappy Comebacks to Loaded Questions
Where the Fuck Am I? A Guide to Dutch Street Names
More Sinterklass Poems to Share and Love

Never one to hog the spotlight (well, maybe sometimes) Rachel fills the pages of her memoir with fascinating characters. Mattijs, who shares his home with her in Amsterdam, who believes that one of his neighbors cancer is in fact “a cancer of the soul.” Herr Winkler, the curt desk clerk in Vienna who disapproves of Berthold, the fatherly figure who teachers Rachel the proper way to eat schnitzel. Hattie, who asked Rachel to keep her company at the abortion clinic because all the magazines were in Dutch. And Pete, the nearly married man whose sociopath romantic tendencies are a catalyst for Rachel, emotionally and physically.

I can hear you asking already “But does it end well?” and yes, of course it does. It’s a happy-go-lucky ending for everyone except the reader, who is left wishing they had friends like Rachel to remind them that everything is going to be great.

[Kim Forsythe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I received this book as a First Reads winner.

I was a little skeptical at first. I requested the book because, like most things, I liked the cover more than the other books on the list. I had never heard of Rachel Shukert before requesting the book, but after I received it I started seeing her name everywhere. People were raving about her and her second memoir. It is always such a pleasant surprise to find out that after being completely shallow in your reading choices you are rewarded with a great book.

Though Shukert is only a few years older than me and this is her SECOND memoir (for Yahweh's sake), her tale has elements that every girl has gone through, or should go through once in her life. Her hilarity in telling her story keeps her from being a sad sack and you know she doesn't feel sorry for herself (or she only does in fits of drunken despair). Her purpose is to make you laugh and to share in her happiness when she does find what she has been looking for in all the wrong places.

I found myself cracking up on the train to work, finding her observation on the European proclivity to eat phallic, second-degree burn inducing meats to be very astute. The travel guide sections are funny and fit the book well, a feature some people have expressed disliking. The back story she gives for her recent accounts provide the reader with essential context and fill out the book with more than just the drunken tales of an uninhibited twenty-something. They give us a clear understanding of who Rachel is and her reasoning (if sometimes outrageous and misguided) for doing some of the things she does.

If you don't notice any of Rachel in yourself, you'll notice her in a friend. If neither are true at least you'll have a laugh.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since I'm studying abroad in London this summer, I have been obsessed with reading books about people traveling to Europe. When I saw this memoir on goodreads, it sounded like something I would love to read, so I picked it up. Sadly to say, I wasn't all that of a fan of Rachel's story and how her "European Grand Tour" turned out.

First off, Rachel's Grand Tour of Europe only really happens in Amsterdam. She spends a couple of pages in France and some in another country, but the rest takes place in America and Amsterdam. I was expecting a story of a girl who went on this great adventure in Europe, not a depressing tale of a girl who has absolutely no idea how she's going to live her life. Rachel went to acting school, and then moved place to place once she graduated. Reading her story was more depressing because there were times when her life absolutely sucked, but she did nothing to try and change it. I know that this is a memoir, so this actually happened in her life and I probably have no right judging her, but some decisions she made were just annoying and stupid. Sleeping around with random guys twice her age, almost getting raped by guys she knew were shady but could possibly give her free dental work, and having the crappiest jobs that make her completely miserable are just a couple of things that happen to her in this book. Maybe I just had different expectations, but I was not a fan of how her life turned out in Europe.

I guess memoirs are a hit or miss for me, and this book was definitely a miss. Everything that happened just wasn't all that interesting to me. I was looking forward to the culture and experiences of going abroad, but I was given something that wasn't that at all. If you're looking for a memoir to read, I'd skip this one for now.

[patrycja polczyk · Rating 2 out of 5]

First of all, I'm glad I didn't pay for this book - I've read through my Scribd subscription. When I've started reading this book, I thought it's not good at all. Later it got bit better, not amazing, though. Subtitle of this book is quite misleading, as most of this "grand tour" consisted of staying in Amsterdam, Zurich and Vienna, with a short break in Paris. I chose this book because of the title, wanting to read about travels. Well, unfortunately it's not really travel book. Instead, we get story of a chick, who doesn't know what to do with her life and most of her choices are quite poor. There's a lot of casual sex with people she don't know, drugs, alcohol and hospital visits. There are also poor relationship choices and lots of crying. Last few chapters of this book feel like they were written by someone else, who suddenly matured and got most of its shit together. So, no, it's not a travel memoir. Rachel doesn't seem like a very likeable person, but there's a happy end to the book, so good for her.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe it took me so long to discover Rachel Shukert! She is one of the funniest and freshest new voices I've come across in a very long time. I thought "How Dare You" was fantastic, but her newest book, part memoir, part travelogue/part lambaste of everything from Santa Claus to Phil Collins was hysterical. I laughed at least once per page. I'm not talking about a chuckle to yourself kind of laugh either; I'm talking milk-out-your-nose-get-thrown-out-of-public-places belly laughter.

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't as bad as I thought, and I am glad I didn't give up after the first 50 pages since it got better as I went along.

Other reviews have mentioned that this book is basically Rachel's tour through the men of Europe, and that is somewhat true. I didn't think it was as bad as other reviews made it sound (the threesome scene was actually a bit funny since the image is of one of the guys cavorting around in his zebra-print g-string), but I did think the title was a bit wrong. It wasn't a "European Grand Tour" since she only visits a few cities in this - Paris (when she's in high school, it's the first chapter), Vienna, Zurich (in which we spend about 1.5 seconds) and Amsterdam (which takes up more than half of the book). As the book progresses and she stays with her Danish friends, we learn about her being a promoter for an English-speaking comedy club (Boom Chicago) and the boy she dates, Pete, who might or might not be a sociopath (he dates her while living with his gf of 6 years and basically his common-law wife while then also putting the moves on her friend when they are in LA together over the winter holidays).

It all comes together when Rachel meets Ben through her old Boom Chicago friend Antonio. At the end of the book, she tells him she's moving back to NYC and he comes with her, leaving his job in Amsterdam. You learn that they get married later.

I do think it's clear that Rachel matures through the book, and her adventures, while a little ridiculous, are funny. I like the Boom Chicago job and the loss of a tooth cap best (she tries to get the help of a stranger who is going to med school- this is where the threesome scene happens.... she eventually goes to a real dentist, all the while having been told it will be REALLY expensive to get her tooth fixed - and it's 82 euros!).

I think she could have done without some of the more R-rated scenes and some of the intro stuff- it didn't make me like her as a person and it seemed like she was trying too hard to be ridiculous. But overall, not a bad read.

[Poptartk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the subtitle of this book (and the cover synopsis) is a tad misleading. Most of the "Grand Tour" takes place in Amsterdam—and that's okay, but it's not in any way about a "Grand Tour." The intro left me worried—the author seemed rather taken with herself and someone I couldn't really connect with. I was wrong about that—she turned out to have a lot of heart in a lot of ways (although she suffered from really poor judgment, which of course was the source of the book's humor). And the book IS funny, generally. Sometimes it's laugh-out-loud funny. Other times (as no doubt the author planned) it's cringeworthy in the extreme. It was a crazy ride of a read with, for all its intentional shock value, a tender, happy ending.

[Natalia]

Personally, I just wasn't into this story. I was looking for a light, fun memoir, which this definitely is, but I couldn't relate to Rachel and the choices she makes, often to the point of being frustrated and asking myself why I was still reading this book. I almost gave up after the first few chapters, but I pushed through to the end. For a "European Grand Tour" there really isn't as much travel as I was hoping for (it takes place almost entirely in Amsterdam and Vienna), and focuses more on all the men Rachel meets. There were some funny moments, but it wasn't enough to make up for all the other stuff I didn't like.

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’d say 4.5 for this one tbh, well written & fun to read. Kinda feels almost how I wish my life was & yet somehow exactly how I’m glad my life is not? You get it. There were some uhh poorly worded things abt trans ppl but? I suppose that is part of it huh. Anyways, it was good! Accidentally grabbed this @ the library and I’m glad I did so -


Also? Going to Europe once I feel like I can somewhat say Yeah That’s It Chief ! (the part abt her going to Europe once as a teen? Really y’all can just @ me next time lmao) (but not actually)

[Bethany · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked Shukert's style of writing. But I had the same (possibly unpopular) reaction to the beginning of this book that I did to "Wild." Which is that the author did so many incredibly stupid, self-destructive things that I wasn't even rooting for her. There are several overly graphic descriptions of sex acts that didn't add anything to the story.

[Wade · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Everything is Going to be Great”... once you finish this book. I didn’t find this memoir funny and it was hardly moving. The author seems to make light of rape and uses the word transsexual multiple times. Glad I got this one from the library. It seemed like the publisher tried to look for someone with an “Eat, Pray, Love”-like experience just to make some money.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you were looking for something profound, this is not the book for you. But if you are looking for something that’s just sort of fun, and a romp around Vienna and Amsterdam with an over sexed 20ish-year-old, then this is definitely the book for you. There’s a good amount of silly raunchiness juxtaposed with wit to make this an entertaining transatlantic flight read.

[Steve Vetter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This lady is a very talented writer. Free spirited, eloquent and imaginative. She is a delightful raconteur and projects a very lovable personality. I had a great time following her throughout her travels. Very quotable as well. I re-read many passages out of pure appreciation of her writing talents.

[Morgan Fluss · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a masturbatory exercise. It was self indulgent recollections for the author whose entitlement had me cringing from the first few pages until the very end. I had hoped to feel escapism to Europe and instead I just feel like I gained vapid insight into the author.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

The “overexposed” parts of this book weren’t for me, but the author’s experience of being an American living in Europe really rang true for me. I appreciated her writing style and felt a connection to those feelings of being at home and yet alone.

[Astrid Faelens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Met veel plezier snel uitgelezen. Dit was precies de avontuurlijker versie van Hannah uit “de man van mijn dromen” van Sittenfeld. Maar qua “coming of age” van Joods meisje in de jaren ‘90-2000 zeer vergelijkbaar.

[Karolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great stories!