She is ready in every chapter to admit how she ended up there, inexcusably hungover and covered in some of her vomit, and equally ready to say “hey I know I was a mess, but I want to help you like my friends helped me, so have you tried ___? If the focus is supposed to be "rituals to fix your life" I thought there was perhaps too much emphasis on describing the past. However, her language oscillates back and forth between well-crafted thoughts and internet abbreviations.

So, even though I’ve had ups and downs with my own mom, it made me appreciate that we do have a good, if not always easy, relationship. I don't know how you could live for a year in a house with gynecological equipment rotting in your front yard and not turn that into a hilarious anecdote? There's a definite "things don't have to be as hard for you as they were for me" kind of sentiment to the book that makes it incredibly relatable and approachable.

She has been on medication for years for depression and anxiety and while she lays out long lists of guidelines to create rituals that will better oneself, she has included notes about how it’s ok to not follow them to the letter all the time. Her plays have been performed in the New York International Fringe Festival and her writing has appeared in The New Yorker online. I have a very toxic relationship with journaling and no longer do that, and I don't really like positive psychology because I feel like it's been co-opted in the social media sphere by people who practice toxic positivity. Divorce, fights, your parents losing their jobs, fights with your boyfriend, you possibly losing your job, being too high, not knowing yourself, those were the things my life was made up of. This is the book Tara wished someone had given her and it is the book many of us desperately need: a candid, hysterical, addictively readable, practical guide to growing up (no matter where you are in life) and learning to love yourself in a non-throw-up-in-your-mouth-it's-so-cheesy way.

The author gives some great recommendations of methods to get yourself out of your own head and into some habits that will help you in the long run. It’s for insufferable millennial women whose godmothers are Suzanne Somers (seriously) but have had imperfect upbringings and need to get their sh*t together despite working with famous people in an enviable industry and means to afford therapy 3x a week in their twenties. As previously noted, you can't trust someone who idolizes Coco Chanel, but the biggest problem here is that this is self-help from a person who 1. I'm loving this book, i was going through some emotional issues at the moment i bought it and it was so calming, funny and conforting, i wasn't familiar with the author but she definitely made an impact in my life. I wanted to say too much that wouldn’t fit in a mid-read update (so I will mentally subtract this one from my 2021 reading challenge).

Part self help and part memoir, I consider this to be a self improvement book for “old millennials”. While acknowledging her privilege, she did not keep any of that in mind when offering the advice, just presuming her audience would have the same privilege as she.