The oddest thing about seeing the metadata for Allie Brosh books is the odd sort of cottage industry that it gets lumped into.

It's hard to articulate exactly, but it's basically Mentally Ill Boss Girl Nonfiction. Mostly women trying to make their mental issues seem funny and relatable and charming and quirky.

Solutions and Other Problems is not that. Not really at all. It's mostly a mixture of bizarre and often funny anecdotes about her childhood mixed with some surprisingly dark existential dread and fear. The whiplash between the two can often be jarring, which feels incredibly intentional. This is absolutely the sort of book for people who have trouble not cracking jokes when confronting the inescapable darkness that's always hanging out nearby, but that we try to ignore as much as possible.

There's this odd sort of thing in the age of social media where people tend to view sharing as a means to either create a teachable moment, tie it into a larger social message, or start a debate. What gets lost in that is plenty of people express themselves for the simple reason that they feel compelled to, and that they think others might find it interesting to listen to.

Brosh at times fully acknowledges that she doesn't really know what the takeaway from some stories is, and even questions if anything has a true meaning, which feels refreshingly honest.

Sometimes the only comfort when approaching inescapable real life horrors is knowing that you aren't suffering alone.