You're Embarrassing Yourself is an unflinchingly candid coming of age memoir that is at once startling, painful, and inspiring to read.. AKhavan's honesty is addictive and drives the narrative. Her willingness to be vulnerable and open about pretty much every detail of her life without painting herself as the victim is admirable. As a memoirist myself, I was impressed with the detail and use of humor, especially handling touchy topics.

If you like Mindy Kaling's books/stories about people who run in privileged circles but are by no means the popular or pretty girls in their school, then this book is for you. I feel like I've read too many of these types of essay collections in the recent years, and it's not really adding anything new to the equation. You see the same formulas (person hung out more with the adults at children's gatherings, person had growth spurt early and stood out from group, person claims they had trouble losing their virginity but still had plenty of hookups before they graduated from college, etc), but nothing really helped it stand out for me (I barely laughed, cringed, or laugh cringed). I opted not to finish the book. I received an arc through NetGalley.

well written memoir thats put togethre fantastically. also the cover is great. thanks so much for the arc. would recommend

I'll be honest. What sold me on this book was the part of the tagline that advertised "the stories she was told to shut up about" - and Desiree did not disappoint. This was such a fun essay collection!

The stories were just as fun, and raw, and weird as they promised to be - without ever feeling like they were trying too hard to be cool, or self-help-y. And, there wasn't a single story that felt weak or out-of-place, which is something I usually expect to see from collections like this. Each one was just the right length and pacing to read on breaks at work, which helped me fly through this in a day. Overall, I had a great time! My favourites from the collection were "Going Downtown" and "Letter to a Young Filmmaker", but "A Cokehead I Met in a Support Group" came close!

For what it's worth, I think this would make for an incredible audiobook listening experience.

Thank you Random House & NetGalley for this eArc :)