I agree with a lot of the reviews that say this book was not marketed well.

I have no issue with it being personal essays - it should’ve been billed as that though. That said, it’s well written and relatable.

The majority of the subjects in this book aren’t tacky. They’re things that regular people like. Just because they’re not considered high brow doesn’t make them tacky. I was looking for a book more about kitsch and bad taste.

I only made it through the first few essays before DNFing. There’s definitely a good audience for this book but I’m not it.

This book was darker and more intense and deep than I thought it would be. I really liked the author and related to many of her cultural references if not her actual experiences. I was hoping for more essays that took on tackiness and not so much memoir. But what she did she did well, it’s just not what the book was billed as.

I have seen a lot of reviews of Tacky on Goodreads from people who don't seem to understand the difference between a "personal" essay and a "critical" essay. This is not a work of cultural criticism so much as it is a personal memoir told through vignettes of life experiences as they come adjacent to the low-brow pop-culture of the early 2000s. I loved every single devastating story and felt so many of her experiences as if I lived through them myself.

If you were a latchkey kid raised with a parenting style of benign-neglect and grew up thinking that someday you would be a talking head on VH1s I Love the 2000s, this is absolutely a book for you.

Tacky by Rax King is a quirky collection of essays celebrating the joys of embracing pop culture and life's so-called “tacky” elements. King’s writing is infused with humor, vulnerability, and sharp cultural observations as she revisits experiences and media that shaped her, from reality TV to chain restaurants. The essays are both nostalgic and personal, offering readers relatable moments of finding beauty and comfort in the unconventional. Many essays share the author's sexual exploits..for better or worse...good and bad. One essay is focused on how Sex & the City neglects to tackle completely awful/lackluster sex. While the book’s informal tone is engaging, some essays can feel uneven, with a few lacking the depth of others. Nonetheless, Tacky succeeds in being an honest ode to finding joy in what others might dismiss, making it an enjoyable read for those who appreciate pop culture with a personal twist.

Tacky. The title drew me in. Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer. The sub title piqued me interest. The cover is great.

I was hoping for pop culture and it's definitely there with restaurant chains like Cheesecake Factory and mall standards like Bath and Body Works and Hot Topic. Music by Creed and TV like Jersey Shore. The majority of the book reads more like a memoir with numerous sexual encounters and drinking. Tacky? Yes!

This meandered from tacky pop culture to tacky personal decisions. The book was just OK.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday

What does good taste even mean? Rax King does not seem to care, as she takes us a through an investigation of our generation's obsession with out-of-this-world styles, events, and aesthetics, from Alanis Morisette's Ironic to the Cheesecake Factory, and a hell of a lot of fun spots in between — King's essays delight and entertain.

2.5 stars
It's not bad I just don't really get the point of this book unfortunately
as someone who is a fan of "tacky" media ("guilty" pleasures some may say), I feel like I was the perfect audience for this book but not really
I think the main point was you should enjoy whatever media you want and don't let yourself be talked down about it, but I don't know if that warrants a whole book.
The most interesting bits were when the author spoke about their personal relationships in terms of tacky media (like their neighbor and creed or their father) but those were never explored to the depth that I was hoping and it became more a composite of "hey remember that show, or musician that everybody loves to hate on, I liked it and I think it's interesting and maybe we shouldn't hate on people for enjoying popular media." Like sure. Not sure it's enough to fill a book
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review

This is a funny take on some common yet decidedly ‘tacky’ things in life, and I enjoyed the humor! The tone lends to the topic and keeps you engaged.

What a fun take on the tackiest days of our lives! Ms. King finds the joy in the most lowbrow and forgettable moments of our collective youth!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this advance copy to review. An interesting look at the tacky.

King's essay collection is laugh-out-loud funny and is perfect for anyone who is obsessed with pop culture, even the cheesy stuff. However, her tone is never snarky and every opinion comes from a place of love. Such a fun book and a perfect palate cleanser if you, like me, have been mired in world events.

Based on the title and subtitle, I was expecting more cultural analysis than personal essays, but this was still a poignant essay collection, mostly about the complexities girlhood and evolving sexuality.

I really loved all the pop culture representations in this book. It is fun and also so thoughtful. I really enjoyed the balance of fun and real.

This was a really fascinating read. I love pop culture and I’m always fascinated with unexpected things that make their way into pop culture. Worth the read if you’re a pop culture fan especially if you’re also an 80s or 90s baby!

I received an ARC of this book by the publisher via Netgalley in an exchange for an honest review.

Tacky is a book of essays in which King intertwines something from the cultural zeitgeist that she considers "tacky" (I refuse to accept The Sims being called tacky since I currently have over a 1000 hours in The Sims 4) and something personal. Examples of some of the pop culture that are featured in the book are the before-mentioned Sims, Hot Topic, The Cheesecake Factory, and The Jersey Shore. This felt like an ode to the Millennial experience. A lot of the essay topics featured heavily in my teenage years as I navigated the 2000s.

King's writing feels tacky (in the best way possible). She's over-the-top and I'm here for it. However, I felt like the essays featured at the beginning of the book were much stronger than the ending. Especially in the last essay, it felt like King had run out of steam. I think the book would've benefited from a couple of the essays being cut from the final product. However, don't let this deter you from giving Tacky a chance.

It was a wild ride. King's life has been a lot more exciting than mine. She describes her forays into partying, sex, and drugs that leaves me feeling like a nun. But it's a fun read, to dive into her world, without the hangovers. It's interesting because I read this around the same time as John Green's book of essays, The Anthropocene Reviewed. A friend asked me my opinions after I finished with The Anthropocene Reviewed and I told her that it paled in comparison to King's Tacky.

Overall, I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.

I rarely say this, but I feel like this book was marketed poorly. Based on the synopsis, I was expecting a book of essays examining the "tacky" pop culture of the 2000s, with some personal anecdotes thrown in for a more personal touch. In fact what this book is is the opposite of that, at least for the second half. It was a lot of highly personal and graphic essays with bits of pop culture sprinkled in. I am in no way a prude, but I felt somewhat blindsided by the graphic details in the essays about the author's sex life, particularly in the second half of the book. I also found the author's writing style a bit scattered and sometimes hard to follow the connection between the pop culture item discussed in the essay and the anecdote she put with it. It wasn't a horrible book, but not one I would recommend, especially if you're looking for an examination of pop culture, tacky or otherwise.

Entertaining, reads like a gen z Samantha Irby if she were upper middle class, white and from the DC suburbs. Not exactly deep or groundbreaking, but you’re not looking for that when you pick up a book titled ‘Tacky.’ Most insights are paraphrases or justifications of points made by other authors (Susan Sontag, Jim Steinem, etc), and by the end you understand that this is therapy-as-essays, a way for the author to work through and justify the things in her life she’s embarrassed about liking - the things she’s been conditioned to think of as ‘tacky,’ even though they’re relatively mainstream. Jersey Shore, Meat Loaf, Cheesecake Factory, spousal abuse - these things aren’t all the same nor do they all belong under the same label, except maybe as things a particular person feels ashamed of. Nevertheless, King tries to be as raw as possible, and doesn’t usually shy away from pointing the finger back at herself. The only times you really feel bad for her are in the essays about her failed marriage, which not so coincidentally are the least entertaining of the collection, but you get the sense that seeking empathy and entertaining are not the main reasons King wrote this - her schtick is that she’s a damaged elder gen z’er, damaged as much by the culture she’s grown up in as much as by personal choices and events. Dumping those experiences onto paper lets us be the person listening while she lays on the couch unloading them, even if in doing so you feel guilty, like you’re watching a car wreck occur. Which of course is among the tackiest of behaviors, so in the end you got what you came for.

This read more like a memoir than a collection of essays. The topics of each essay seem to be mentioned only to give something of a structure to the different aspects of her life she wanted to share. I did enjoy reading these essays but was confused as it was presented very differently in the blurb than what it really was.

This book was fun and well written, but the description is misleading so it wasn't the book that I was looking for or would have chosen. Instead of a microhistory or social history about taste and pop culture, this is really more of a memoir that looks at the author's life through the lens of different "bad taste" pop cultural selections.
The author balances funny and serious in their glimpses back, and if you are looking for a personal essays that also talk about Creed, the Cheesecake Factory, the Jersey Shore, and more then this would be a great match.

I received an advanced digital copy of this book from the author, publisher and NetGalley.com. Thanks to all for the opportunity to read and review. The opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Rax King's book is an entertaining stomp through everything distasteful that we secretly love. All things Tacky! A mix of memoir and commentary on culture King shares more than what she sees as the worst culture we have, she tells her experiences, good, bad, and indifferent.

4 out of 5 stars.