The advertising of this book is very misleading, in my opinion, and I just didn’t vibe with it. I thought it was going to be a series of essays about growing up millennial and how the era we aged in influenced us. But, alas, this was very much just the author writing essays about her own life that I did not care about. I love pop culture and I love reminiscing on the pop culture of my youth, but just mentioning things from my youth will not make me nostalgic enough to read a full book on this.

There are three sections - Nineties, 2000s, and today - and I don’t think the author committed enough to them. The essays could have swapped sections and it wouldn’t have really mattered.

The author was pretty clever with her wordplay, twisting common phrases with millennial references. This was fun, but it got overdone after reading more than one essay.

I had never listened to the author’s podcast, and I am unsure if that would have improved my liking of it. Regardless, I got sick of it.

Thank you NetGalley and St Martins Press for the ARC! I wanted to love this more as a fan of Kate Kennedy. It unfortunately fell flat for me and left me feeling disengaged. I’m sure other readers will enjoy this!

I have been a longtime Kate Kennedy fan through her Podcast, Be There in Five, and found her deep dives (particularly the Mormon mom bloggers and the Call Her Daddy breakup) to be both extremely funny and extremely clever. So this, coupled with my elder millennial nostalgia, made this book a home run for me. I was a little too poor for an American Girl doll and trundle bed, but the nostalgia was there for me nonetheless. The author admits this in the beginning, but her prose is very sing-songy — which I loved at some points and at others found it distracting.

4 stars! Thank you NetGALLEY!

Amusing reading this one, how similar my experience was to Kate’s, growing up at the same time on opposite sides of the country. I appreciate the honesty she has in examining the tangles of the culture we tried to keep up with to feel normal, and the way she’s able to do that with a critical eye and gentleness towards our younger selves.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

4⭐️

Funny, nostalgic, relatable, and thoroughly enjoyable. I had not previously listened to the author’s podcast, but this book made me want to tune in. It was really entertaining, well thought out, and hit on all the great 90s and early 2000s stuff I loved while commenting on what it was like to grow up in that era and enter adulthood as an industry destroying, avocado toast eating millennial.

I went into this thinking it might be a nostalgic, funny read and I just didn’t expect the direction it was headed. While parts were relatable as a millennial, I didn’t love the overall tone of the book. While, I appreciated the authors opinions, I didn’t love the depressing feeling of the overall book.

Thank you for this advanced reader copy. Where I felt this book was a bit long for the content, it was a great blast to the past for those of us who grew up in the 90s and the oughts.

Nostalgia, heart and so much more!!

As a millennial myself, this book hit home!! It was nice reliving the early 2000’s while reading this. I felt seen and heard for the first time in ages. I could totally see myself and Kate being friends!!

I would highly recommend this book to all my millennial friends!! 10 out of 10!!!

One that I wanted to love, but couldn't fully get into. The transitions between personal narrative and factual/statistical data were choppy, so it was difficult to get into the flow. Added at least half a star for the sheer nostalgia of it!

I could tell from the title and description that I would relate to this book. Little did I know just how much. Kate Kennedy and I might have been the same person at some points in our life. Although some of it was so relatable it made me cringe, it was also good to hear that others have felt the same way growing up as a millennial. A great ode to our past and present, and a more hopeful future.

Nora McInerny & her podcast, Terrible, Thanks for Asking, introduced me to Kate Kennedy & 𝘩𝘦𝘳 podcast, Be There in Five, in 2020 at a TTFA virtual live show. Kate is a “Chicago-based millennial, multihyphenate, author (OIAM isn’t her first book!), & pop-culture commentator,” & in her book she waxes poetic about girlhood & growing up a millennial. Her takes are a refreshing departure from the consistent shitting-on millennials often get from the mainstream media, with all the industries we’ve killed off (marmalade?!), & the fact that we’re supposedly lazy & entitled. While Kate defends us to the bitter end, she also brilliantly points out that we were raised for a world that no longer exists. Our generation straddles the technological divide, having had a mostly unplugged childhood only to enter college & beyond in a very digital world. I laughed out loud at the way Kate reminisced about vacation boyfriends, popular girl handwriting, & the art of going out versus going out-out, & I felt empathy for a younger version of myself who at times feigned interest in things I thought would make me look cooler than I felt.

Nothing like a hyper-specific book to make a girl think. So much of this hit uncomfortably close to home, triggered memories, and fostered reflection - and dare I say even a little bit of healing. This book is for a pretty particular audience, but if you are an elder millennial like me who loved (loves?) the Spice Girls and think a little too much about - well, everything - this might just be for you.

Hiii! This book captures perfectly what it was like to be a teenager in the early 2000s and totally validates the plights of the millennial and GIRLHOOD! Kate is a girls girl.

I've enjoyed Kate's podcast for a while now and knew that her way with words alone would make this book great! I'm slightly younger than her target demographic, but I could still relate to much of the book. She provides space for thoughtful discussion on often trivialized topics, giving permission for us to enjoy things without second-guessing ourselves. Its a refreshing and fun read, definitely recommend the audio book too for the added spoken inflections that might not come through in just text.

While quite long winded at times, I found this book to be full of nostalgia and the author someone who would’ve seamlessly fit in with my friend group. Recommended for all millennials who had American Girl Dolls and angsty AIM away messages.

This was funny, witty, and had all the nostalgia. As a millennial female I loved being thrown back to all the wild and crazy things we obsessed over in our youth and definitely recommend if you fall in that category. However, this does read more memoir which isn’t how it was described/ marketed but I have zero regrets reading this.

Usually I pop onto NetGalley to do my reviews more or less as soon as I finish a book, but I marinated on this one a few days. I think, in the end... it wasn't for me?

Going back and reviewing the info, it's marketed as a 'commentary on millennial pop culture' but it was... a memoir of a person who was really into pop culture...? And not at all what that pop culture meant to... culture, and how it really affected those that grew up within its grasp.

Kate Kennedy (who I was wholly unfamiliar with prior to reading this book) is only about four-ish years younger than I am, but we experienced a lot of the same things -- in completely different ways. Reading Once in a Millennial was like listening to the little sister of a classmate talk a lot about pop culture of the time, thirty years later. And while that pop culture was really important and formative to all of us who grew up through it (especially us who were raised as girls as media "for girls" is continually undervalued) it really just didn't affect me the same way as it did her. I have fond memories of TGIF nights but the whole boy crazy phase skipped me (and then I turned out to be not straight and very strongly demiromantic/sexual bordering on the "a" part of the spectrum, so, the gap is real) and living my school age life around what boys may think of me just... completely passed me by. So I'm glad she called it "One in a Millennial" and explains it's her very personal experience living through the 90s (00s, and now) and it's fascinating how very different we who grew up in the same era are.

Also, unfortunately, I found the very "I got really into Hamilton during That Period and it obviously affects my writing" rhymes that happen SO OFTEN really distracting and it took away a lot of this reading experience for me. Same goes with the constant trying to see how she could work in every possible pun/play on words/reference as much as possible. I didn't like that! A play on words and a reference is so fun but when it happens SO MUCH it's just distracting and not as clever as it probably felt at the time.

So, not for me, but I can see how a lot of people roughly my age would probably like this a lot.

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the eARC in exchange for review!

An early DNF, I will not review any further due to the ongoing Speak Up SMP boycott on social media platforms.

Wow, this book was spot on and relatable af - I especially appreciate all the commentary on deep topics such as feminism, intersectionality, and the really horrendous misogynistic culture we come from, while also discussing more trivial topics such as popular girl handwriting and boy bands.

That being said, I did find the book WAY TOO LONG, and it was a bit unorganized and chaotic in its delivery. I also found rather then feeling nostalgic at times, it was just very sad.