I haven’t finished yet, but want to make some notes. Why is she so desperate to have a baby? Why is she think 28 is too old to have a baby? Why does she call it the flux? She seems to work too much, what is with this work obsession

She also seems super young. Talking about how old 30 is, and how much to get done before then, not realising she’s still a baby. Totally obsessed with being in a relationship she needs to learn how to be alone!

A lot of stuff is written from 2015, which is pre-Trump. It’s like a little cultural time capsule of how we used to think. When journalists had high-status jobs. 2015 seems like a long time ago now. Also she really needed to chill out and figure out who she was, all this pretending must have been super exhausting and frustrating

Also there is no real consideration for another way of life. She was always going to get married, but a house and have a baby. No thought as to whether that would be right for her, no thought as to whether there’s another way to live, no thought as to why there is so much perceived pressure to have a kid.

Super obsessed about what others think of her. Hasn’t realised most people aren’t thinking of you at all they are to busy thinking about themselves.

The editing is a bit weird, it’s like a collection of disjoint essays, but the same people appear in them with vastly different descriptions. In one her husband Nick is described in great detail then in the next chapter he is relegated simply to partner. Then there is Alice again described in great detail as the platonic love of her life and yet later she is simply Stevo’s partner.

I enjoyed bits of this, but there were times when I wanted to throw my kindle across the room with how simultaneously smug and self deprecating it was. It was about 100 pages too long and at times felt like being inside someone else's anxiety-ridden brain with no escape. It gave a pretty narrow view of life in all its wonder and possibilities. I want my friends to read it to hear what they think, but would advise people to tread carefully with it generally. It's a memoir, not a self help book.

3.75
I actually enjoyed this book, I picked it up not really knowing what it was about (I just saw it recommended on a book stack) and was pleasantly surprised to have read something so relevant to my current life stage. Though I myself have never had baby fever, im starting to question motherhood altogether. I’m at a point where friends are getting married, wanting to have kids and planning on freezing their eggs meanwhile I still feel like a child at heart. This book offers a peek behind the curtain of all that happens when going into a stage in life where one starts to question whether or not to have kids and beyond that, the socioeconomic factors at play when making these decisions. This book is so transparent and raw and unapologetically human, it has writing that captivates with both anecdotal truths and statistical evidence. I would recommend this book to everyone and anyone regardless of whether or not they have kids, want kids, don’t want kids, or haven’t even thought about kids.

reading the reviews on this, it seems like many folks were looking for a self help book and to be fair, it does seem to be marketed as one. That being said, I often find self help books to be far too reductive so I like that this read a bit like an internal monologue of anxiety, decision making and all the thoughts we have around the decisions we make in our 20s.

Maybe I just resonated more with her opinions, but it was somewhat comforting to normalize these conversations.

Definitely worth noting that the content could be triggering in many different regards.