I decided to give Romolini’s memoir a listen (big thank you to Simon Audio for my copy) after I saw she was coming to my local indie. The only thing I knew about Romolini was that she co-hosted a podcast called “Everything’s Fine,” which I listen to fairly regularly. But it was her career in media and publishing that piqued my interest, as well as her rejection of the early 2000s “boss babe” culture. And I’m happy to say it was absolutely fantastic. I gobbled it up in less than two days, and felt like I had found a new friend in Romolini. If you’re “of a certain age” and find these sorts of books fascinating, I highly recommend it (especially on audio – her narration is great). For fans of One in a Millennial by Kate Kennedy and No One Tells You This by Glynnis MacNicol.

A huge thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read this ARC. I typically don't like to review memoirs too harshly. But there is no need to take it easy on this one, because this book was great. This was a captivating memoir of how powerful ambition can be. I recommended this to my book club and would like to read it again, maybe listen to the audiobook.

I loved this memoir! I listened along as I read and she did a great narrating her book. I appreciated the chronology of her life but also insight into the tech and magazine worlds. Great writing that kept me wanting for more!

This is a very well written and detailed look at the author's life. It can be a brutal read sometimes due to Romolini's openness about her life, starting with child abuse, followed by a string of abusive relationships and bad life choices because she didn't feel worthy of better. Her self-admitted out-of-control ambition grew out of a need to prove to herself and others that she could be good at something, anything.

This is a memoir full of pain, sadness, and deep searching for something better than she's known. I applaud her honesty and vulnerability as well as her writing skills. I wish her happiness and peace.

There are a lot of things covered in this book that could be triggers for many readers. I urge you to carefully read the description as well as other reviews to decide if this is a book for you.

My thanks to Atria Books for allowing me to read an ARC of this book through NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own and are freely given.

An excellent memoir of a Gen-X woman’s journey from difficult childhood through midlife, and how that affected her trajectory into the work world.

Well-written, just as I would have expected from Romolini, but I was expecting more from her memoir. The story felt very "smoothed over" and heavily biased in favor of the writer's experience.

Ambition Monster brings an interesting and unapologetic look at Jennifer Romolini's life. Not knowing who Jennifer was or why this memoir mattered, I chose it based on a way to look in on the publishing world from a viewpoint of someone in the trenches. How many bookworms dream of working in the publishing world in some way?

The lifestyle and lessons that Jennifepresent throughout the book felt like a train wreck that you know is happening and can't stop watching. The prose flowed keeping me engaged even when there were points I wanted to slam the door on the book. Raw, brutally honest, and painful are words that I would use continuously as I read.

My favorite quote: It's the first job where the idea of what I do lies in stark contrast with the reality. It's the job where an outside narrative of my career and my life begins to form, where people start looking at me not as who I am but as what I do and-relatedly--what I can do for them. Acquaintances reach out, looking for access. A childhood friend pitches her new pet apparel business multiple times, even after I explain Lucky doesn't cover pets. An old high school boyfriend calls my extension at work to find out if his wife can send me samples from her hair accessory line. One of my mom's friends makes decoupage furniture she thinks "will be perfect for Lucky!" Someone else has a store that she's sure needs to be in one of our local guides. I feel bad saying no, but I can't say yes. Each interaction is awkward and uncomfortable, pushes me further from the person I used to be, distances me further from who and what I knew.

My second favorite:
Like many addictions, workaholism is cumulative: over time, sufferers become dependent on the fleeting, drug-like euphoria that comes from accomplishment; the positive, secure, confident feelings- -absent in the rest of their lives--that come with a pat on the back
from a boss or a good performance review. Over-immersion in work acts as a kind of antianxiety, a controlled space to fully submerge in and calm an unquiet mind. Workaholics like these develop a dependency on their own competence, an outsize need to be efficient, productive, to do things "right."' (Chapter entitled "Pulling a Geographic")

What I loved about the book: the raw honesty of her life. Pouring herself out on pages like that to show her progression. I also appreciated the added research and commentary about how locations and society expectations shape us in ways that we don't consciously recognize until we are in the middle of it.

What wasn't my favorite: Some of the moments felt like they were put in as space filling and not as important to the overall story of the book. They almost felt like they were only in there for timing and no large gaps as nothing happened that really went with the progression of how Jennifer growed and healed.

Overall, Ambition Monster brings a unique look at a moment In the publishing industry inner workings during the 1990s and early 2000s and what that culture required of Jennifer's life to progress.

Wow, this memoir had everything that I look for in this genre. Emotion, honesty, vulnerability. It is so tricky to rate memoirs because it always feels like I'm rating "someone" not just their story. Romolini made it very easy to rate this - a solid 5 stars for me. I definitely loved the beginning and the end the most. I was instantly engrossed when she was talking about her childhood and how that impacted the person she became. Although that sounds generic, I don't mean it that way at all. The way she recounts her childhood is compelling and engaging - she writes in such a way that is honest yet not deprecating.

I find that workaholism is not often talked about which is another reason that I loved reading this so much. I also admire the way she was so honest about her struggles and that she wraps up the memoir with a realistic conclusion - not always pretty but real. I want more memoirs like this!

<i>We like to imagine ourselves the heroes of our own stories, the victims at least. It’s harder to see when we behave as villains ourselves.</i>

A refreshingly honest memoir, Jennifer Romolini can WRITE, and she paints a realistic portrait of a young girl who grows up to be a woman who is both black and white, both good and bad. She is excellent with a turn of phrase, and I was completely engrossed in the first 75% or so. I can’t help but feel, however, that this memoir was perhaps written too soon, as the ending is a bit rushed with less introspection than I was expecting and even less closure.

Pub Date: 6/4/24
Review Published: 6/11/24
eARC received from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I found this memoir to not only be excellently written (an unsurprising feat as we learn more and more about Romolini’s career) but also extremely introspective. While my career journey started closer to the “quiet quitting” era than the #girlboss era, the goal of being an exceptional, successful, and easygoing corporate employee as a woman is one that is still deeply ingrained. Watching Romolini fall prey to this toxic trap and then successfully dismantle it for herself is the exact type of guidance I would point all young working women towards. What she provides in this memoir may come across initially as a cautionary tale, but ultimately lands as a portrait of growth, perseverance, and hope.

I received an ARC of this novel through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Well, I felt a bit misled by the title and description of Ambition Monster. While there is certainly a focus on work, I felt like this was much more of a general memoir than an exploration of workaholism. We get to problematic work tendencies closer to 40% of the way in, so I felt like I was slogging through background information to get to the work piece. I also felt there were many other themes that stood out to me more, including the glaringly obvious failure of the feminist messaging that has propelled countless women into unfulfilling lives of chasing men and careers in hopes of finding meaning in their lives.

While Jennifer Romolini’s exploration of her life events was certainly interesting, I found myself becoming checked-out as she explored adult relationships that were doomed to fail. There was a focus on family in the beginning that was obviously missing once Romolini moved to New York and became pretty self-centered. I felt very sad for the author as she entered motherhood with little support and resources. I felt like this highlighted the failure of this mindset that women can have it all. They cannot. You cannot be all-in at work and all-in at home. I wanted to read this book as a sort of voyeur into a life of work and it ultimately made me sad.

I think the book will most likely resonate with women living in cities. There is a totally different lifestyle that comes with city living that I think a lot of women can and also cannot relate to. I also think Romolini’s childhood experiences were really impactful on how she viewed herself as an adult and this would also be validating for readers with similar experiences. I noticed a lot of similarities between Ambition Monster and Raising Hell, Living Well by Jessica Elefante. I preferred Elefante’s book.

Thank you to NetGalley, Atria Books, and the author Jennifer Romolini for an ARC of this memoir!

I really enjoyed this book about a woman who had a difficult childhood and rose to success and then had to rethink it all. A lot of the stories were highly relatable as I"m around the same age and was in NYC working at the same time. I LOVED Sassy and magazines of the day and also wanted to work in publishing. I did for a stint and then nevermore (yikes it cut-throat). Overall a very well written book that touches on a lot of themes working moms (and non working moms) will likely feel close to.

This was a great book. I appreciate its clear look at our country's work ethic and how it is linked to class and gender as well as childhood trauma. I would love to see this book taught in business schools and MBA programs as a corrective to certain kinds of toxic work culture.

I liked this book. The messier the character, the more the fun. However, her "ambition monster", when going back through her childhood to connect to her present day issues, appears to be a product of societal gender roles and expectations thrusted onto girls at a young age, rather than just a mix of her unique experiences. Jennifer Romolini was taught that girls should fit into a box, that they are made for the home, and that they shouldn't reach farther than what is ahead of them. But, in order to live outside those boundaries, they must be ambitious, hustle, and ignore societal warnings to "turn back", which culminate into the common adage, "women need to work twice as hard as men." So, Jennifer second-guessing herself, having little self-confidence, and just aimlessly living life are all parts of the human, or maybe even just the female?, experience that we are all familiar with. I saw parts of myself in her and that is one reason why I kept reading.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria books for the advanced reader copy.

This memoir was so close to being 5 stars for me. As someone who can get caught in a workaholic spiral, I really appreciated Romolini's explanation of where her own tendencies came from and what it can feel like in your head to need to succeed. The behind the scenes peek at the grossness happening at several big name companies (she doesn't name names but if you Google her you can figure it out) scratched my voyeuristic itch.

What kept it from feeling like an almost perfect memoir was the extended metaphor about birds that seems to come from nowhere at the end. I found myself skimming past most of these pages as they were tonally different than the rest of the book.

I am so thankful to the publisher, NetGalley, and the Author for granting me advanced access to this one before June 11, 2024. This one wasn't for me, but I am still really thankful for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

A BIG THANK YOU to Atria Books and NetGalley for the ARC of Ambition Monster: A Memoir by Jennifer Romolini, detailing her life—from her chaotic childhood as the daughter of young, inexperienced parents to her precarious job hopping through toxic workplaces as she ascends into upper management in the media industry as a young woman with zero work-life balance and equally precarious personal relationships.

Her story feels like my story, like our story. As she writes, the story of every woman in the 80s chasing the perpetuated image of a woman wearing a business skirt suit with a toddler in tow. Or in my case, the story of the 90s too, right on her heels, wearing heels, while climbing the same corporate ladders. The same story retold about having it all, both domestically and professionally, if you just work yourself to death in the process, literally—"a pantsuit-wearing overcorrection."

If you have ever been a workaholic at any point in your life, you will relate to this memoir. The constant people-pleasing, putting out fires, jumping through hoops, working through lunch, working evenings, nights, weekends, and holidays as if on-call around the clock with no additional pay to chase the promise of the next raise or the next promotion that sometimes never comes. Essentially feeling as though you have finally made yourself indispensable, all while being incredibly dispensable because a corporation is not actually your family. As that saying goes, “If you died tonight, your manager would put out a job posting in 48 hours looking for a replacement. Your loved ones will miss you forever. Never become so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”

I was torn between taking breaks from reading and not being able to put it down. "What does it mean to have value? What determines success? How do we know if we've failed?" Only we can answer these questions for ourselves. This is sure to be one of the best-selling memoirs of the entire year.

From an editorial perspective, the ARC I received could benefit from another pass for common errors still present in the copy. There are still missing articles, missing words, missing punctuation and capitalization, formatting issues still coming across on the page. Basically, a rough copy in need of another thorough edit with a keen eye, as these errors are a disservice to the text and the story being told.

I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

5 of 5 Stars
Pub Date 04 June 2024
#AmbitionMonster #NetGalley

I really liked this story, but I think I'm less interested in reading about the workplace than I realized. I think this will resonate with a lot of people though.

I am always in for a memoir and love learning about people's life stories. The title grabbed me, especially as I think about my own workaholic tendencies. This was really sad. Jennifer Romolini had an intense childhood, and it's incredible that she was able to lift herself up. I found certain sections really repetitive. But, I also felt like I wish there was more time to explore and get deeper. Romolini isn't the most likable and I found myself super frustrated with many of her choices.

3.5 stars, but rounding down to 3.

Thank you Netgalley & Atria Books for the advanced reader copy.

It was such a pleasure to meet Jennifer Romolini. Her book was such a source of inspiration for women having to juggle a household, a child, a husband, friends, and a career. I appreciated the rawness of this memoir -Jennifer removes all her NY and LA artifice and exposed her soul to us all. This book was a real source of inspiration as I was also born in the70s in a working-class family. I was also very ambitious, working my ass off to climb the corporate ladder to give meaning to my life and do what I had to do to provide for my daughters. Our lives are quite different so I also enjoyed reading about her time in the unique city of New York: it was astonishing to read about the sharks in the Fashion, Publishing and Corporate worlds and those horrible work experiences many people believe only exist in movies. I command Jennifer for pulling through. I still don't know how she was able to juggle everything without the help of in-laws. It is true that the family we are born into molds us to be the adult we become later. What a great, so well written memoir that I will definitely read again, but jn audio this time, to give me motivation next time I hit a slump.

A strong 5 stars!

Thank you Net Galley and the publisher for this e-ARC in exchange of a honest review.