Dolls of Our Lives was a fun and nostalgic look into my past. I would definitely suggest this for someone looking for a fun unique read.

Thank you to NetGalley and McMillan Audii for a free copy of this ausiobook in exchange for my honest review.

First of all, I will start by saying that these two authors are absolutely delightful to listen to. They are great narrators for an audiobook.

This book does a great job of going through the history of American Girl, the founder, the he book authors, the magazine, the changes through the years, etc. They dig into how things expanded and changed and the reasons behind those changes. They also go deep into how American Girl inspired young girls and all the ways kids have found joy in them for decades.

This was a really fun, informative, and joyful book!

I was very excited about this audiobook, as I grew up right when the American Girls were hitting the shelves, and the catalogue was a staple of my reading collection (and in fact, I think it still shows up at my mom's house to this day). But this wasn't quite the format I wanted to learn about the history of the company. I don't listen to their podcast, so hearing the back stories of Mahoney and Horrocks was unnecessary and a bit overindulgent for me. It quickly led me to lose interest because I had to listen to all of their very specific personal connections to these dolls and characters, so I wasn't given the freedom to make my own personal connections as I listened. A disappointment overall.

I wanted to enjoy this one more than I did, but I came away from it feeling like it was just alright.

I don’t think this book had much of a sense of what it wanted to be. It’s party history, part memoir and a bunch of 90s pop culture references thrown together. The authors referring to themselves in the third-person also felt very weird to me given that this book had some memoir elements.

I thought the history about Pleasant Rowland herself and how she created the American Girl brand was interesting, and I wish the authors would have dug into that a bit more.

But overall, this book was mainly a recounting of American Girl’s products (which you likely remember well if you grew up when they were popular). While I appreciated the nostalgia factor, I found the observations about the company really just being a lifestyle brand of sorts for younger girls a bit dull and fairly obvious.

I will give this book a lot of credit for critiquing AG’s whitewashing of history, particularly for Addie and Josefina’s characters.

I'm not the age of an American Doll fanatic but I am the mother of one. This still brought back memories for me. I recommended it to my daughter and we both had fun reading and talking about this.

This was a really fun read that brought back lots of memories. I loved all of the humor. I grew up with American Girl dolls so I loved this read. It had a very podcast, easy listening sort of feel to it. It definitely went into a lot of detail and history that I found really interesting. Anyone around my age (millennial) that grew up with these would probably really enjoy this one.

This was a light and easy to listen to audiobook. The double authors and narration was interesting and fun to listen to. The tidbits of information and millennial-aimed comments spread throughout were humourous and enjoyable for those who grew up with the dolls. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for giving me the chance to listen to this audiobook.

I absolutely adored this read. Consistent with the podcast, this book was nostalgic and informative.

Cute book and listening to it felt like listening to a podcast. I liked how this book drew up some nostalgia for me. Overall good narration and I liked the discussion.

This was a nostalgic read for me as a millennial who grew up in the midst of the American Girl Doll craze. I appreciated all of the millennial humor. It was a lot more in depth with the history and the start of Pleasant Company then I cared to know but it was still interesting, though it lulled a bit at times. I have never listened to their podcast before so I was unfamiliar with the authors but it did not distract from my enjoyment. I think any girl (woman now) who had their own American Girl Doll will enjoy this book. It's light hearted and funny and I enjoyed listening.

This book is really fun and the two readers made this more fun. I liked the mix of the history of the dolls and also the personal history and relationship of these authors to each other and to the dolls. This was anything but dry!

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the audio ARC of Dolls of Our Lives. I was excited for this book since I’m a millennial who loves exploring the impact of nostalgic items on my generation.

While this was informative and I enjoyed the history of Pleasant Rollins and the minuscule history provided on the company and characters, it felt like it was missing something. Maybe this is because I don’t listen to the authors’ podcast - so I wasn’t feeling the magic and was looking for more info on the dolls, books, etc. how they came up with the specific ones, etc. these are probably topics they’ve covered previously. This was enjoyable, I liked the insight into how the authors’ relationship with the franchise impacted their adulthood and familial relationships. Overall, unfortunately, this wasn’t what I was hoping for or thought it would be.

I was a huge American Girl Doll fan growing up. My sister and I were given a doll each only at Christmas because the dolls were so expensive and it was our treat each year. I have such fond memories of waking up on Christmas morning to see those dolls under the tree. Because of my love for AG, I was intrigued by this book premise. I was not familiar with the authors' podcast before the start of the book, but now I am interested to see if the element I found lacking in the book, is corrected in their podcast episodes.

Basically my one grip with this book was that I wanted a deeper dive into the history of the brand and the individual dolls. I felt like that would have been fascinating and much better than the surface-level history we did receive.

I will say that if at any point in your life, you were a fan of American Girl Doll, I think you would love this book.

I loved American Girl when I was a kid! I grew out of right before Kit came on the scene. Kirsten was my favorite (offspring of Swedish immigrants!), I had a Samantha doll with clothes family members sewed, and I had #1-6 of the Felicity, Josefina, Kirsten, Addy, Samantha, and Molly books. However much I thought I was a die-hard fan before listening to this audiobook... I was very much mistaken. Their emphasis on the catalogs and Colonial Williamsburg were boring and repetitive. After awhile, it felt like they were stretched too thin on content. I don't think I'll bother with their podcast after DNF'ing this at 75%.

I truly hate to say that I was quite disappointed by this book. I have just as much American Girl nostalgia as the next gal, but that nostalgia was not enough to get me to read and enjoy a book that feels like a superficial, hodgepodge collection of tidbits about the dolls and The Pleasant Company. The writing was very millennial cringe, filled with so many unnecessary hashtags and random paraphrased song references. I truly felt like I was forcing myself to finish and hoping it would get better, but it was just the same content over and over. I honestly couldn’t tell you if I learned anything new from this book. Such a bummer - this was one of my most anticipated nonfiction reads for this year! Thank you to the publisher for the ARC via NetGalley.

Dolls of our Lives is a fascinating look into the history, and continued passion from many, of the American Girl dolls. Thank you to @netgalley and @macmillan.audio for this listening copy of the book! Considering that this is told by podcasters and American Girl enthusiasts Mary Mahoney and Allison Horrocks, I definitely recommend it as a listen.​​​​​​​​
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These podcasters turned authors delve into the origin story of the brand, including interviews, personal experiences, & travels to Williamsburg, to take an up-close look at inventor Pleasant Rowland. What was her vision for the dolls and how did that evolve over time? From tactile toys to magazines and books that hold core memories for many now adults, this brand was and is unique in its offerings. This book really sets out to answer the question what was it about this brand that shaped a generation?​​​​​​​​
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I really enjoyed this book. While I wasn’t a huge American Girl fan growing up, I did recently find my own Josefina doll and found myself giddy looking at her old writing desk complete with feather quill. The authors did a great job explaining difficult pasts of the doll with how this is being approached in the future. Overall, a really fascinating listen for any longterm fan of the dolls.

If you are a fan of American Girl Dolls, or you were as a child, you MUST read this book. It’s feel-good nonfiction at its finest with these two writers giving us the background on the beloved Pleasant Company dolls. I love that the writers read this audiobook. It felt like listening to a conversation with friends.

It focuses on the 6 original American Girls, and also explains how they met and created their podcast. I found myself wrapped up in fond memories of my own childhood. This read will bring back all the nostalgia for your own dolls!

This is a book that interested me because my daughter is a child of the 90s and I vicariously enjoyed watching her play with her American Girl dolls. I loved the intricacy of the costumes and accessories but don't really recall the stories that went with the dolls at all.
The premise of the book, that of telling of the effect on young girls lives and the history that they learned was very intriguing. The book started out well and I enjoyed hearing of the women's experiences with the dolls
- how it affected their life choices and how they connected. I also enjoyed the story of Pleasant Company and its founder. The section on Felicity was particularly good.
As the book progressed it became more about the flawed history that the girls represented. This is something that I very much agree with but it did become a bit tedious and rather took over the book.
The book is well researched and could be rather scholarly if it were not for the constant references to "hip" culture of the 90s. This definitely was tedious for me.
I believe this book would be very well received by young women for whom this would all be more nostalgic.
For me this was a listen (audio) not a read and I do believe it would come off better in print.

✨ Review ✨ Dolls of Our Lives: Why We Can't Quit American Girl by Mary Mahoney; Allison Horrocks

I never had an American Girl doll (and I'm still just a little bitter about it), but I loved the books, the catalogs, and even the AG magazine (which I had forgotten about until this book!). The book is the perfect bit of critical nostalgia for all the 80s/90s girls that were entranced by the AG catalogs and the hot moment of historical fiction we lived through.

Written and read by Mahoney and Horrocks, the podcast hosts of a show with the same name, the book digs deep into AG -- the dolls, the stories, the company's back story. It is flexible in allowing nostalgic memories of these items and how they impacted our lives, while also making space for critical commentary on their limitations (especially around race and class in the present and in the stories themselves -- e.g. not everyone could afford these dolls / this brand, and what does it mean that the one of the first/only characters of color was an enslaved person?). I would have loved for them to dig even further into a queer reading of the dolls and company, but enjoyed the bits of this they provided.

Maybe most compelling to me was how they described AG as an early lifestyle brand -- shaping the way that girls lived girlhood by narrating acceptable activities, ethics, etc. This is especially clear to me in thinking back to the magazine!

I also ADORED this as a model of public history work -- "history is something to think with, not memorize." Love it!

A really fun read that hit just right in many different ways!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: nonfiction, history, culture
Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
Pub Date: out now!

Thanks to Macmillan Audio and #netgalley for the gifted advanced copy/ies of this book!

“If you play making apple butter, or goat-herding, or sturdy perseverance in the face of unforgiving winters; if you play with loss before you have to encounter it; if you play survival, or freedom or girlhood — who knows what you’ll be prepared for." -Margaret Lyons as quoted in Dolls of Our Lives

As a listener of the excellent American Girl doll podcast @dollsofourlivespodcast AND as a failed American Girl doll club vice-president I was primed to love this book and it did not disappoint.

You do not have to have owned an American Girl doll to enjoy Mary Mahoney’s and Allison Horrocks highly entertaining history of the peak of millennial girlhood (but it helps).

I had a Molly McIntire doll and although I am oddly straight, I AM a librarian, so that tracks. Molly gave me a lifelong love of historical fiction, an obsession with the London Blitz and bleak WW2 documentaries.

The authors do a wonderful job of balancing critique of the ways the American Girl doll brand could have done better, while still celebrating the innovation of the time and the way it inspired many young girls.

I highly recommend the audio version as I love hearing the two hosts signature humor in their own voices.