Confession time: I own a copy of We Are Never Meeting in Real Life that I have never read, which I only own because I was the first person to borrow it from the library, and almost immediately managed to upend an open bottle of iced tea in my book bag, having to replace the copy. I bought a new copy for the library, kept the damaged copy, and, because I now owned it, promptly put it on a book shelf, where it still sits.

This is all to say that, after reading Wow, No Thank You I really need to pull the other off my book shelf and spend some more time with Samantha Irby.

I loved this series of essays. Irby is honest and refreshing and said things that were immensely relatable to me, but that I've never really said out loud to anyone. But the entire chapter entitled "Girls Gone Mild" could really and truly be my life, most especially the "do I eat?" dilemma. I do not have Crohn's disease, so really don't know what Irby's pain is like there, but I do know what it feels like to fear the whims of your gastrointestinal system any time you make social plans. So holy moly, could I relate to places in the book where she addresses that.

I also absolutely adored "Late- 1900s Time Capsule" chapter, where she shares her mixtape tracks. Also highly relatable, despite being unfamiliar with like 90% of the specific songs that she mentions. She does a great job of capturing the era of mixtapes, but also the feeling of using music as a teenager/early adult to process emotions and wallow, and express feelings you don't know how to on your own. To embrace the angst and the things that are being sung about that you definitely don't understand yet, but still feels incredibly important and necessary anyway. Ugh - yes to all of that, and to hearing those songs bringing you RIGHT back to that place, while also allowing you to look back as an adult and see everything in a totally different light. So good. So, so good. Also, I will be creating her mix in a playlist on Spotify because -- isn't that what you do when someone provides you with a song list?

There were a few chapters that worked less well for me - "Lesbian Bed Death" was decidedly not my favorite - it was clever enough at first, but went on too long for me. Ditto for "Hello, 911?" except there were a few gems in here, like panic over a place not having online ordering (because...COME ON!).

Even though there were a couple misses, though, overall I really really enjoyed reading this. I actually laughed out loud a few times, and silently said "OMG YES!" because I could relate so much at others.

So, yeah, check this out, while I go pull her last book off my bookshelf!

Also, thanks to Netgalley, who provided me with an advanced copy of this wonderful book.