Niklas reviewed Pretty Mess by Erika Jayne
Review of 'Pretty Mess' on 'Storygraph'
2 stars
While the first half of the book circles around the author's adolescence, youth, growing up, and becoming herself, the second part lets this book down severely. Even though this book is written much in the same short and no-nonsense manner in which the author speaks on "Real Housewives", and there are a few real gems to be found here - notably on her relationship with her mother, and how her world turned once she became famous - there's a lot of filler here, e.g. far too many pages of faff from "Dancing With The Stars", which sums up what a far leap she is from common life. She even defines her own "me too", which has nothing to do with what you probably think it means. She gives no rich-person excuses for her lifestyle, while offering no true insight into it, which simultaneously lends a veneer to the book as …
While the first half of the book circles around the author's adolescence, youth, growing up, and becoming herself, the second part lets this book down severely. Even though this book is written much in the same short and no-nonsense manner in which the author speaks on "Real Housewives", and there are a few real gems to be found here - notably on her relationship with her mother, and how her world turned once she became famous - there's a lot of filler here, e.g. far too many pages of faff from "Dancing With The Stars", which sums up what a far leap she is from common life. She even defines her own "me too", which has nothing to do with what you probably think it means. She gives no rich-person excuses for her lifestyle, while offering no true insight into it, which simultaneously lends a veneer to the book as a whole; I was hoping for more internal insights from this place, but got more pages of the times spent Erika gets flown in her Gulfstream private jet plane. All in all, if you chuck the book after the first 60%, I'll say the experience is probably the better for it.