Book Review: I'm Glad My Mom Died

Book Review: I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy 

Goodreads Description: A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life.

Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

My Review: I'm usually not interested in celebrity memoirs, since most celebrities aren't writers and many publishers are unwilling to give their manuscripts the editorial feedback they need. Jennette McCurdy's book is a different story. After hearing snippets of the audiobook online, I was quick to snatch it up. Right from the first page, McCurdy demonstrates a knack for storytelling and a keen eye for scene construction that leaves every chapter feeling poignant.

If you pick up this book hoping for a behind the scenes look at Nickelodeon and McCurdy's time with Dan Schneider, you'll end up disappointed. The book spends very little time discussing her work on set, and almost no time on Schneider himself. McCurdy's intention with this book was to tell the story of her abusive and codependent relationship with her mother, so the book doesn't linger on her career as to not detract from the heart of the story. 

Unlike most memoirs, McCurdy does far more Showing over the course of the text than Telling. She doesn't interrupt the flow of the scene with introspection or tell us what to think about her story, she just lets it play out and allows the reader to draw their own conclusions. It's through this first-hand, novel-like account that McCurdy is able to demonstrate how love and abuse can become to enmeshed. How a mother who loved her daughter so much could cause so much harm. This is exceptionally important because people who have never experienced this type of abuse often cannot fathom how that relationship functions. However, during the final chapter, McCurdy switches gears and inserts her present day reflections as a sort of "conclusion" to clear up anything that may have been misunderstood. McCurdy spends the entire book showing us how her mother has treated her and in the final chapter, names it: "I was abused." 

McCurdy's strategic use of showing and telling, coupled with her masterful characterization, speaks to her incredible talent for storytelling. At first, her writing may appear bland with no flowery language, but this utilitarian writing style allows us to focus on the action of the scene without distraction. Every bit of the story is intentionally placed to communicate how the helplessness and powerlessness from her childhood manifested as shame and anxiety in her adult life. The real power in McCurdy's storytelling comes as she leads us through her recovery after her mother's death. The book takes us through her healing process and demonstrates not only that healing is possible, but what it actually looks like, with all its highs and lows. This representation is exceedingly powerful for people who see themselves in McCurdy's abuse story, but have yet to figure out what their own path to recovery looks like. 

All in all, marvelous, spectacular. This book left me with that tingly, 'wow' feeling that only comes from a powerful story expertly executed. While its messages on abuse, addiction, and recovery are moving, ultimately what sets this book apart is its focus on relationships and how they ultimately shape our lives - for better or for worse. 

TL;DR: 5/5 stars. One celebrity memoir that you don't want to miss. 

Book Review: Dracula

 

Book Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker 

Goodreads Description: When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the 'Master' and his imminent arrival.

My Review: Every year from May to November, a substack newsletter called Dracula Daily sends out Bram Stoker's novel in bite-sized chunks to readers all over the world. Since Dracula is an epistolary novel with every entry dated, Dracula Daily is able to send each letter to you on the day it happens, making it seem like you've got a gaggle of eccentric, one-sided pen pals. This was how I got around to reading Dracula, and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to sink their teeth into the daddy of all vampire stories. It breaks the novel down into digestible chunks, which makes reading a Classic™ far less intimidating, and gives readers a new way to get involved with the story. Plus, the building tension as days pass with no word from the characters does provide an extra little thrill. If you want to catch up on your classics, Book Riot compiled a list of substack newsletters you can subscribe to that were inspired by Dracula Daily. 

And now, for Dracula itself. Published near the end of the Victorian era, this book amalgamates many aspects of Victorian purity ideology in a way that's both fascinating and frustrating. It smacks you hard with female infantilization, back-hands you with virginal purity and promiscuous corruption, drowns you in white knight chivalry, and then spits a little extra xenophobia onto the plate for flavouring. Mina and Lucy are placed on pedestals, one lost to foreign corruption and sexuality while the other must be protected from it. It plays into a Christian heteronormative hierarchy that says while women are pure and good (and sometimes even smart and skilled, like Mina), they are still ultimately weaker than men and must be cared for like children. Despite Mina being a key player in the hunt for the Count, the men often leave her out of conversations or keep her in the dark for "her own protection," which can be irritating for modern readers. While those pieces may be annoying, Dracula also encapsulates this sexist, puritan ideology to such a perfect degree that it becomes fascinating to analyze. Count Dracula's foreign otherness, combined with his thirst for young, innocent girls, makes him an interesting caricature of what Victorians, and even some people today, think of as monstrous. 

Bram Stoker is a master of dread tension - the kind of creeping terror that defines the horror genre. It's the moment before the pounce, before the jump scare, where every hair is raised and something is screaming at you to RUN, even if there's no logical reason for it. The first quarter of the book, when Johnathan Harker travels to Count Dracula's castle, captures this feeling perfectly. Johnathan explores the castle and gets to know the count, all the while seeing strange sights and suffering from stranger afflictions. Despite numerous warnings, including a woman begging Johnathan to flee from the horrors to come, our naïve horror protagonist pushes on until it's far too late to turn back. The tension hovers at a perfect boiling point through much of the novel, though it does suffer later when vampire hunting devolves into paperwork and shipment tracking. To make a convoluted story short, Dracula hides in boxes of grave dirt and then ships himself out of the country, leaving our protagonists in a scramble to track down the box he's hiding in. While some complain that the Victorian bureaucracy grinds the narrative to a halt, Stoker manages to keep the stakes and tension high enough to carry readers through the duller bits. Plus, this aspect of the story places constraints on Dracula's power that makes his ultimate defeat feel reasonable. Dracula may be insanely powerful, but the 'rules' of his vampirism reduce him from a god-like figure into a mortal one. One can get the best of a vampire, so long as they know how. 

TL;DR: 4/5 stars. A dreadfully tense classic wrapped in Victorian puritan values. 

Book Review: Cinder

Book Review: Cinder by Marissa Meyer 

Goodreads Description: Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless Lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. . . . Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg.

She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

My Review: I picked up Cinder about 10 years ago when the book released, so this review has been a long time coming. As the cover and title suggest, Cinder is a steampunk retelling of Cinderella, set in a futuristic New Beijing filled with cyborgs and robots. It expands the original story by introducing a deadly plague that's crippled the globe and tense intergalactic politics centered around a possible royal marriage. In the midst of all this lives Cinder, who works as a mechanic in a Tatooine-like market in order to buy herself a new ankle and car to escape her abusive family.

Let's start with the positives: Meyer's characterization is on point. The chemistry between Cinder and Prince Kai is POPPING. They're both strong, charismatic individuals with their own lives and motivations who end up crossing paths again and again until it leads to something more. It's a satisfying change from YA books where the love interest seems to have no life outside the main character. I was also pleasantly surprised by the political drama between the Lunar kingdom and the people of Earth/New Beijing. Meyer simplified world politics into a handful of state powers to create an us-vs-them structure between Earthlings and Lunars, while still showing how New Beijing is under pressure from other states to make peace with the aliens. This simplified political drama feels perfect for YA readers transitioning from younger fantasy stories towards adult "romantasy," with court drama, politics, and inter-cultural clashes. Despite that, the line between Earthlings and Lunars was depicted as very black and white. Meyer describes how Lunars are savage, totalitarian, and oppressive to their own peoples, committing genocides and using mind control without hesitation. While there is some evidence that "not all Lunars" are evil, the book doesn't do enough to show that good and evil are not tied to one's race. It's trying to play out a more adult political drama, yet falls back on a childish good guys and bad guys dichotomy that feels out of step with what the rest of the book is trying to do. 

While the book does make an effort to avoid the "love at first sight" trope, it steers headlong into "not like other girls." In the years since this book was written, a lot has been said about the "not like other girls" girl who presents herself as "one of the guys" while putting down girls with traditionally feminine interests. This trope ultimately perpetuates misogyny by pitting women against each other while arguing femininity is somehow inferior. Cinder uncritically leans into this trope -- she puts down other girls for wanting to go to the ball, she implies other girls are vapid while she's smart because she cares about mechanics, she resists Prince Kai's flirting and somehow this is supposed to make her cool, etc., etc. This book could have thoughtfully deconstructed and subverted the trope, as Cinder's condescension could have been seen as a defense mechanism for the insecurity she feels about her cyborg parts, but instead the book uncritically embraces the trope without any awareness for the misogyny being perpetuated. In the wake of feminism's sisterhood movement, this book feels both cringey and dated. 

As far as plot goes, I was disappointed by how predictable it was. The book is a retelling, so I expected a certain degree of predictability, but the new parts of the story that Meyer added-- the plague, the politics with a different state, the Lunar people's magic (or lack thereof) -- were so predictable that it was a struggle to stay focused. There was no attempt to subvert expectations - it was almost cliched in the way it did exactly what you thought it would, yet the narration ups the drama by trying to make these incredibly mundane plot twists seem shocking. Perhaps it's my years of reading that make this book so predictable, because Cinder isn't bad at what it does. If you want something that plays into your exact expectations for a teen princess story, then Cinder is it, but unfortunately, that's all it is. 

The final letdown for this book was its lackluster sense of setting. Despite being a steampunk world set in a futuristic Beijing, little effort was put into worldbuilding. We get some description of cramped alleyways, concrete, or tall skyscrapers, but other than that, the world is largely blank. Meyer relies on the droid characters and Cinder's cyborg parts to expand the steampunk elements, yet only utilizes them aesthetically and makes no effort to show how their addition influences the world. Steampunk cities are often infused with so much personality that they become characters themselves, yet New Beijing is almost entirely flavourless. Sadly, this is probably Cinder's biggest missed opportunity.

Despite my complaints, Cinder is an incredibly solid story with some decent writing, great characterization, and decent political drama. While I found the book a little boring and Cinder's Alt Girl routine tiresome, the book never became a drag to read. It would likely be a hit for teen girls who are graduating from books like Anna and the French Kiss and moving towards Strange the Dreamer or A Court of Thorns and Roses. 

TL;DR: 3/5 stars. A solid steampunk Cinderella retelling that errs on the side of predictable and anti-feminist.