“One In A Millennial” has been on my bookish wishlist for some time, so I was quite happy to discover that it was available as a read now ARC. (Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for this opportunity to provide my honest opinion.)

My younger sister and I are technically Xennials (the “cusp” group whose members are born during the late seventies and early eighties), We grew up in the eighties and the nineties, so many of the early chapters in the book truly resonated with the experience we had. The pop culture, the early internet (AOL!)….I also remember it “all too well.” I enjoyed all the fun and quirky references and witticisms. Despite being a little older than the author, I found a lot to relate to throughout the book. Lots of nostalgia and thoughtful coming-of-age essays make this a must-read for anyone who enjoys that genre.

As a millennial myself, albeit one with quite different life experiences than the author, I really enjoyed this book. While it is wordy at times, the word play and references (esp all the Taylor Swift lyrics) truly delighted me. Though I am a bit younger, am the eldest child to the author’s youngest, am short and fat compared to the author’s “plain and tall,” and was raised in California compared to the author’s Virginia, we still both were part of the same shared straight, cis middle-class white girl culture and liked many of the same things, from Limited Too to Spice Girls to boy bands, and who can forget the Forever 21 going out top. What’s more, the way she connected her past interests to her current musings on feminism, equality, and becoming an adult in American society were pretty insightful. The author knows that she represents just one type of lived experience and expresses that clearly. For me, the first sections of the book were perhaps the most fun to read, as chock-full of said references as they were, but I did also enjoy reading about her path to motherhood and her take on the “love-marriage-baby carriage pipeline” in the latter section as well. She doesn’t speak for every millennial, but I’ll take Kate Kennedy over Hannah Horvath any day (not a reference she makes, though she does appear to watch HBO, as she did give us Sex & the City allusions). I loved it, 5 stars from me.

DNF at 18%. It’s incredibly wordy without really going anywhere. Feels like something I’d enjoy reading an article for, I don’t need a whole book. Some funny parts, just not enough for me to want to keep going.