Susannah Breslin grew up in California and with two very academic professors as parents, they enrolled her into this long-term research project where her and her life were observed and theories were made based on her reaction to tests and to life itself. Essentially Susannah and many of her peers across the country were lab rats and their response to various tests were used to make predictions on what kind of adults they would become and the life they would end up with.

Maybe spoiling it a bit, the last chapter was it for me. While Susannah was a lab rat, aren't we all now with big tech tracking our every moves through google searches, phone analytics and gps. It made me remind myself that for sure the instagram and facebook ads are targeted and know exactly what I am shopping for or what life issues I need solved (dog hair in laundry!). So maybe in the end we are all being tracked and companies are predicting the life that we want and the products that will best get us there!

A quick little memoir that really made me think about the quality of research and had me pondering all of those personality tests that affirmed what I was already thinking about myself.

This was incredibly eye opening. Not only the things that Susannah had to go through but the way that she wrote about it. I enjoyed every page, and I hope that she is doing well today.

This book was just “meh” for me. I felt like I was reading it because I had to finish it instead of reading it because I wanted to finish it. I can’t quite put my finger on what it was.

This wasn’t what I was expecting at all but I enjoyed the book. It’s always interesting getting a glimpse into another persons life.

I hate giving star ratings to books that feel very personal.

First thank you to the author and Netgalley for the free copy.
I have to give this book a 2.5 star rating. I feel a “bait and switch” happened. I was intrigued to read about this experiment the author grew up in, however ended up reading a general memoir that had fragments of the experiment sprinkled in. The writing was superb and she has had an interesting life but I was let down to not learn about the experiment.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5914272597

This memoir was absolutely fascinating and came at a time that I was discussing with my therapist about personality and whether disorders can amplify or overtake certain aspects of your personality, so I was on a personality knowledge trip. It was really interesting to learn that some of the study findings were true, but others...not so much. I did appreciate the point that the author made, that the study participants came from a fairly liberal enclave and if the study participants were more diverse, in terms of distribution across the United States and around the world, the findings would have been more ground breaking. From this book, I understand the cost, effort, and time a longitudinal study requires, but it would have been better if the researchers of the study kept one thing in mind: create a sample set that is representative of a larger dataset, and suffice to say, San Francisco, CA is not a great sample set to represent the whole of America, let alone the Western world or the whole world at that. All in all, a very good and interesting read that will keep you engaged on an intellectual level with a human interest component.

I overall enjoyed the book but felt like it was misrepresented. At the end of the book, the author says she didn't want to write a memoir but that's what the publisher wanted. I felt like it wasn't advertised as a memoir but thats what it was. Her story was interesting and learning about the Block Study was something new, but it did not feel like there was a conclusion to it all. I know she mentions it a little in the last chapter that a lot of the data had been tossed and no life changing conclusions had been reached from the data but it doesn't seem like the process of researching this helped Breslin find any conclusions. The ending also came out of nowhere. The whole book is about Breslin's life and experience being a part of a longitudinal study. But at the end, all of a sudden its about Big Brother and how technology is mining all of our data. Its an interesting idea but I wish she had brought it up earlier if that was the argument she wanted to make.

Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment by Susannah Breslin is a recommended memoir - for the right reader.

Right after Susannah Breslin was born in 1968 her parents enrolled her in an exclusive laboratory preschool at the University of California, Berkeley. She was one of over a hundred children who were research subjects in the Block Project, a thirty-year study and psychology experiment of personality development. The study was supposed to predict who the subjects would be as adults. The memoir has limited memories and revelations concerning her participation in the study and instead focuses on her various life experiences.

The description of this memoir does a disservice to the actual book Breslin wrote since the Block Project plays such a small part in the actual text. Now, the book written is not one I would have been interested in reading and reviewing. I'm not interested in the adult entertainment scene in San Francisco or the porn industry. I pushed through, hoping for more on the study she opened with. Honestly, in the end her memoir and style of writing weren't appealing for this reader. She does finally circle back to the study. The final examination of what happened to it and questions about the future were interesting.

This would have been better if it was an article about her participation in the study, skipped over the memoir bit, and then jumped forward to the final summation of her later research into it and what it could mean for the future.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Grand Central Publishing via NetGalley.
The review will be published on Edelweiss, X, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

I found Data Baby to be very sad. Breslin records the events of her life and I hope she found some peace.
I can’t imagine parents signing their children up to be lab specimens, but that’s what Breslin’s mother did, despite the story she had always been told that it was her father, I found her mother to be very selfish, who openly stated she never wanted to be a mother and signed Breslin up so she could have more free time.
I skipped most of the study parts and all the sociological and psychological parts because they didn’t interest me.
Breslin was estranged from all her family. It’s a depressing read.

This was a very interesting memoir of Breslin’s life, beginning with her time being studied for a psychological study as a child. I found her writing to be compelling and interesting. The book did seem to straddle the line between memoir and work of journalism, but in a way that made me wish it had committed more fully to one or the other. Regardless, it was still a fascinating life story and I would recommend for anyone looking for a lesser know life perspective.

Breslin very much achieved her goal of the writing style being of a memoir (as well as the passion and overall vibe of her work as a journalist) and I very much appreciated that

the biggest complaint I have is with the way in which she explains certain references to other pieces of media because it felt like I was being talked down to. for example, she mentions the Truman Show at one point and briefly explains the plot - but anyone reading it, especially who has not seen the movie or is not familiar with it, could Google it. it's a little thing, but it aggravated me every time it happened.

overall, this was a good memoir and i felt like she worked hard to get as close that she could get to the truth, both using what she has of her own memories but also the data she was able to find from her research. AND she spent energy and time talking about where those memories (as well as the data) may have faltered.

i would recommend, especially to those interested in the genre of memoir as well as those who are excited by the book's description

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me a free and advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The premise of the book caught my attention-a longitudinal study of a child's life into adulthood as the now adult looks back and wants to delve deeper into their research into her own life to find out if her "life" was in fact predicted by the study! The pacing of the book flowed well and kept me interested, and I liked how the author really explained all of the tests, exams, etc. that she remembered throughout the process. Her life was colorful and interesting-but was this a product of trauma experienced as a child through her mother's behaviors towards her? I also enjoyed seeing the trajectory of her life as an adult, the experiences she endured in her marriage and in her career and how she handled them, speculating on how the study influenced her decisions unconsciously. Another effect to be considered is how even being involved in an experiment like this could ultimately shape someone into thinking they're special or even on a "stage" of sorts, and the author discusses this throughout the book as well. I really enjoyed this memoir, and think anybody interested in psychology who enjoys modern biographies would like this book. Thanks, NetGalley and Publisher for the ARC!

What an exquisite, unexpected memoir. Rooted in an examination of the longitudinal study Susannah Breslin was enrolled in as a toddler and which concluded in her 32nd year, and of whether such a study could truly determine what kind of people its subjects would grow up to be, Data Baby is a beautiful exploration of the impact of genetic and environmental influences (nature vs. nurture) on the choices a person makes throughout their lives, and the way their experiences continually shape them even well into adulthood. It's also a treatise on the ways human data harvesting has impacted society and culture, and the inherently flawed nature of studies such as the one Breslin was enrolled in as a child. I'll be thinking of this book for a long time to come. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read it.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for my copy of Data Baby by Susannah Breslin in exchange for an honest review. It publishes November 7, 2023.
I was initially so drawn to and excited about this book, the premise! A psychological experiment? How could they? Do tell! But by chapter 3 I was not really getting much, and the graphic sex work stuff was a huge turn off, (pun intended), and definitely requires a warning. It’s graphic and goes on and on and on.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and was able to complete it in about 2 days. The author is someone whose childhood was spent desperately craving love and attention from her parents. At the same time, she was a participant in a longitudinal psychological study about human development. She remembers her participation in the study because there were occasions when attention was being paid directly to her, which made her feel special. The book focuses a lot on the progression of her life, which I found very interesting. Let's just say she is not a shrinking violet. She mentions that writing a memoir was not her original goal for this book but was something her publisher insisted upon. As a journalist she intended to write about the study itself while not mentioning her participation in it. Because the study records have been destroyed, she was unable to tie her results to anything in her adult life anyway. I still found the book to be very interesting and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in it.

This book had potential to be a good story, but it just fell flat for me. The premise of being studied from a small child through adulthood is really interesting to me, but this “memoir” missed the mark and was just not very good. I struggled to get through it because the writer seemed kind of detached from her own life story and the whole childhood study didn’t seem to have much of an impact on her mostly depressing, and quite frankly, boring life.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me read this digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I felt like this should have been a long form article (or podcast?) instead of a memoir. It was written in a very clinical way which made it difficult to connect that it actually happened to the author.

The idea and the ethics of her being in the study was fascinating and something I've thought about a lot but I don't think a memoir was what the writer wanted to write and showed.

This book was fine but I just couldn’t get into it

~This book was given by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Publication date: 11/7/23

The premise of this memoir sounded really interesting to me. I was a psychology minor and was intrigued by this longitudinal study following children through adulthood.

While I enjoyed the beginning of the memoir, it soon veered into a lot of what I consider unrelated stories about the author's life. And yes, this would've been appropriate if the stories/experiences were later tied into the study findings, but they really weren't. I was hoping this book would delve much more in depth to the actual study, her memories of being a participant, and the findings. Really, she only touched on these issues and doesn't seem to remember a lot.

One thing I found really annoying with the author's writing style was her constantly over-explaining basic concepts/cultural and media references. For example: she writes "when all the 'snowbirds'--those who spent the spring and summer up north and the fall and winter in Florida..." Or when she'd explain ideas that should already be obvious to an average reader: "I was blocked, which struck me as fitting, seeing as my name of the study had foretold my predicament (Block Project| blocked)". There were also instances where the author would write descriptions that could've been edited much tighter: "hung my clothes in the bedroom closet and my coats in the hall closet, and bought groceries that I put in the refrigerator and canned goods that I arranged in neat lines in the kitchen cabinets."

While I think there were many sections that the author wrote well, overall, this was a bit of a disappointment for me. I think there was a lot of potential here, but think this would've worked better as a short story/essay.

DATA BABY is a book that doesn’t know what it wants to be. The premise sells it as an expose of this radical-seeming “human-subject study” of the 1960s and its (presumably) deleterious lifelong effects on the author, who was enrolled in the study by her parents as a pre-schooler. Instead, not only was she *not* negatively affected (or affected in any way, really), but we don’t even get to find out if her childhood personality predicted the person she would become because all of the files from the study were, SPOILER ALERT, destroyed! That’s the big reveal, and it’s a very meh one. I can imagine a book in which this type of true event would feel like karma, or one of those “stranger than fiction” real-life quirks, but it’s not this book. This book is a memoir comprised of lists of things that happened with zero emotional buy-in and a rather unrelatable narrator. She had some interesting things happen to her, any of which would have made for a good book on their own if explored in depth. She was a journalist who covered the sex industry. She married her husband nine days after meeting him. When these things are lumped together though with no clear through-line, the whole thing falls flat. I wanted a lot more from this story than it delivered. Thanks to the publisher for an ARC!