Chelsea Hodson is one of the most unique voices in publishing today. This book was no disappointment to her bibliography either. Would recommend.

One of the most stylish essay collections every and fully deserving of all the praise it's earned. I'm looking forward to her next.

Something happens to us when we spend too much time alone. Reality gets warped and our minds wander to strange and dark places. The internal monologues get too lout and you hear nothing else. These essays reflect this isolation and inner thoughts. Quirky, fun, and dark.

"Inside an old library book, I requested from offsite storage I found a scrap of paper with typewriter text that said, Pity the animal that has no animal in it. Written inside another library book: mutilation noted. How much can a body endure? Almost everything.

Review available at Book Riot, "20 Great 2018 Essay Collections": https://bookriot.com/2018/10/25/great-2018-essay-collections/

There were snippets where I would be wowed and would say out loud, “dang, I felt that.” However, as I kept on reading that’s all there was...just snippets, clever one-liners of profound emotion but I wanted more than that. I wanted to go farther deep into that hurt and longing and explore it and dissect it.
Yet by no means did I not like this book, I was still able to connect to it, and it did make me eager to read whatever Hodson writes next.

Thank you net galley for the book however, I couldn't finish even half of it, even after several tries. It seemed pointless and disconnected. The author just rambles on about segments of her life, seemingly with the purpose of sharing personal revelations and insights but lost my interest as the chapters progressed. When it started to get too painful to muster through, I just pronounced it dead.

I loved this collection so, so much. Chelsea Hodson doesn't speak at you or write telling you how we should be but instead writes how we are, faults included. Hodson's vulnerability shines through and her intensity and stripped prose breathe honesty. Highly recommend.

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to review this title.

Chelsea Hodson's long-anticipated essay collection 'Tonight I'm Someone Else' lives up to the hype she generated by her chapbook 'Pity the Animal.' The collection engages similar themes: relationship, success, New York, sex, mistakes, beauty, commerce, wealth and poverty, America, crime, love, growing up, and many other topics that have become a staple of the contemporary personal essay. Hodson begins many essays with the kind of piercing, brilliant prose that proves envy in many writers; the control she has of her ideas as they set the parameters for an essay is remarkable.

In some sense the essays aren't "about" anything; a lover named "Cody," her time in school Arizona, her time working in retail and as a model. But there's more to it than that. Granted, sometimes the essay collection felt repetitive but it wasn't a cloying repetitiveness, rather the result of the vicissitudes of publishing in 2018: write a bunch of content and finally secure a book deal. One could argue that the range of this collection is limited. While this reviewer recognizes the merit in this critique, it is best understood as an invitation for more. The most under-utilized aspect of the collection is the author's beauty. Her model past is significant and she is clearly aware of the power of her own beauty in her varied relationships. This may have been due to fears of vanity (and certainly some readers would have found self-reflection about the author's beauty to be off-putting). Hodson's beauty doesn't appear to be constitutive of her identity; she is aware of how it has shaped her life but it isn't who she is, and her treatment of her own insecurity in relationships since early adolescence mitigates claims of vanity. Additionally, some of the essays sort of peter out rather than ending on a strong note.

Had this reviewer read the book in manuscript, the reviewer would have recommended greater theorizing about desire. It is a central theme for the collection but it is never treated systematically.

Overall, this is a significant contribution to the contemporary personal essay. It was emotionally engaging but not overly sad. May Hodson's work continue to flow for all of our benefit.

This essay is lyrically and poetically written, leaning more towards prose than traditional essay. Depending on the reader and what they are wanting to read, this information will likely lead to whether it is enjoyed or not.