Well this one really hurt.
There were so many pieces of this memoir that felt familiar and so relatable. I empathized with AMT greatly with her mental health struggles and how they stemmed from her years of growing up. I think it's REALLY important to note that childhood trauma sticks and affects how we are as adults. With that being said, this book isn't an attack on men and I'm exhausted from seeing reviews saying that it is. This memoir is the effects of what specific parenting styles will do to someone's psyche and how those effects manifest later in life.
Because of AMT's self-esteem troubles & growing experiences, she tended to gravitate towards the one thing that was familiar territory to her; a person who wasn't good for her mental health. Even though this territory is painful and unhealthy, it's also a comfort because of the familiarity.
I thought this was an incredibly thoughtful and heartfelt book. I loved how she took us on her journey of her life and especially noted how she had changed over the years with her self-help/encouragement of friends and family. One of my favorite things she wrote about was how one of her doctors told her to follow her intuition and to stop the self-doubt, 'if something feels off, it probably is' sort of thing.
This memoir is all about finding yourself and finding how to love yourself despite what you were taught throughout your life. While I felt personally attacked through the majority of it, I absolutely love a personal growth journey.
I can't recommend this book enough to people who may have similar experiences as AMT. This is a heavy read and it will make you cry (or maybe that's just me) but it is such a beautiful self-discovery story.

Insightful and interesting read that’s relatable to a lot of women. Definitely recommend for women of all ages to read. A story of a strong woman and resilience.

I was so excited to start this book but after reading several reviews surrounding it's contents, I was unable to get into this book. This has nothing to do with the writer herself, as the prose was interesting, I was just unable to relate to it.

This was so well written and really devastating. I read this book a very low point in my life, being overly depressed and angry with most men, and it hit soooo much harder for me. I found myself on the page and felt how therapeutic this was for her & myself really. I am glad this isn’t huge celebrity gossip book.

Like so many, I was excited to read this firsthand account of Anna Marie Tendler (especially after the narrative that has formed since the demise of her marriage to JM). I am sad to say, I didn't finish this one. I found it be insufferable and hard to relate to and I was really disappointed.

It feels strange to say I enjoyed a memoir about someone’s mental illness, but Tendler’s documentation of her treatment was riveting. Her self-awareness and vulnerability mostly left me feeling sympathy for her. Then, at other times, I found her insufferable, selfish and obnoxious. The first part of the book moved quickly, but I lost a little bit of interest in the last third. Tendler’s divorce from comedian John Mulaney was underway when they both entered rehab in 2021. I would imagine he played a role in the negative feelings she has toward men but she barely mentions him (signed an NDA perhaps?). She's under no obligation to share her experience but I do think it would have connected the dots, explaining her particularly angry stance toward men.

I found this book very entertaining. Anna narrates her own experience of checking into a psychiatric hospital because of self-harm and suicidal thoughts (definitely check trigger warnings before picking up this book). Anna explains how she really tries to keep being alive and get better, especially after she comes back home into the real life. I found her experiences very relatable and felt very empathetic toward all the people who struggle with mental health and don't come out alive. It was sad and inspiring at the same time. I highly recommend, especially for those who are struggling or have someone in their lives who struggle with mental illness.

I really enjoyed this book so much. There was so much anticipation for <i>Men Have Called Her Crazy</i> when Tendler announced her book deal last year, and a lot of people were hoping for the gruesome details of her very public separation from her ex. Instead what Tendler has created is an introspective work about her own mental health struggles and the simmering anger she feels toward men that have taken advantage of both her and the system. Tendler isn't perfect, nor does she pretend to be in this memoir. Readers looking to paint her as the "good guy" in the divorce will most likely be disappointed as she recounts her struggles to find herself in her teens and twenties. I really enjoyed Tendler's voice and ability to analyze her own flaws. I hope that we'll see more of her writing again soon.

I found Tendler likable, but this book felt like the author didn't have enough distance from the events to reflect on them in a coherent way, and it came across as a bit of a mashup and as a book that probably exists to capitalize on whatever degree of internet fame the writer has. Not BAD, but very forgettable.

I thought this was a beautifully-written memoir. I've seen some criticism of this book being too-heavily about one woman's hatred of men, but so what? This is a memoir of a life shaped by the daggers men have flung this ONE woman's way (among so many other of lives weapons). It does not have to, and should not, speak to everyone, but it spoke to me. I'm deeply grateful to Tendler for telling this patient, personal story.

thank you to the publisher for the early copy and happy belated pub day to AMT! if you are going into this expecting to find some expose that tears john mulaney apart, you will simply be disappointed as the man is never mentioned by name and only exists in the shadows of anna’s story.

this story has a lot going on, simply put. anna bravely puts to words what suicidal ideation and debilitating anxiety feels like for a person, something that is truly not an easy task. anna weaves stories of adolescence and young adulthood throughout her time at a psychiatric facility, which allows the reader to see her as a fully rounded individual. i do wish there was some more discussions on the psychiatrist industry and the problems that come when the industry has basically refused to evolve since the 1950s as i felt AMT just grazed this topic. at the end of the day, this was a book she felt she needed to write and i’m really glad she had this outlet.

i don’t have the proper words to describe how “men have called her crazy” impacted me, despite its faults.

in a pointed and classy move, tendler avoids mentioning her recognizable ex-husband by name and eschews any salacious details, keeping the focus on her. while i admit i was waiting for any nugget of gossip, i think this choice was the right one. by doing so, tendler takes the space in her own right, avoiding allowing her ex-husband to co-opt any more of her life. after living through my own ex-lover’s betrayal and twisting of the knife, i empathize deeply with tendler, and am in awe of how she managed to forge ahead and carve out her own niches. i’m still working on that myself. that being said, tendler still feels lost in her own narrative, and hasn't had the time or distance to come to terms with everything that has happened. as a result, this book ends up feeling unfinished, and would have instead benefited from being the original photography book with vignettes that i heard was originally proposed.

When requesting this book, I expected a deep-dive into the psyche of a woman who has been thrust into the public eye due to her connection to a man. I had hoped, and was encouraged by the title of this book, that Tendler would examine the ways in which she has been depicted and discussed in the media, and the impact such treatment has had upon her. This book is not that. It is not nearly as thoughtful as I had hoped, and lacked a significant amount of self-awareness that is desperately needed when writing a book of this variety. I found it hard to get through this book, and wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't independently a fan of Tendler.

This one just did not work for me even though I love memoirs about mental health. The book read mostly as a retelling of relationships and her current stay in a psychiatric facility but didn’t do much more than that. I couldn’t get myself invested and was bored while reading. It also rubbed me the wrong way to keep saying “fucking men” but then talking so much about men and how they’re centered in her life.

I got maybe 20% into this one, wasn't feeling it, and have yet to find the will to pick it back up. I think my expectations weren't aligned with what I've seen of this book unfortunately.

This was a well-structured book with a really strong voice. I thought Anna Marie was a great storyteller. I loved how the book alternated between chapters about her coming of age/figuring out her career and more "current day" chapters about her time in the treatment center. As someone who prefers nonfiction that is formatted as a narrative, it really worked well for me. I'd recommend this book to fiction readers who are looking to try nonfiction. Additionally, I want to say that I don't understand why people are reading this book to judge Anna Marie's life choices. This was a really interesting and vulnerable story, and you shouldn't criticize her for what she was willing to share with an audience. If you were entertained by it, then don't be a hypocrite.

i was really excited for this but this was unbearable to read. this book felt more like a diary with a lot of trauma dumping. and it didn't really seem like the author really healed or grew from it? she just seemed like she allowed her hatred and rage to fester and now she's just a bitter person. not a fan!

Alllll the trigger warnings (obvi) but this is engaging and well written. I was incredibly hyped for this memoir when it was announced and it didn't disappoint although it did take me a while to get through. Tendler is incredibly honest and forthcoming in this book which I really appreciated (and recognize how hard that must be given her life experiences).

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was one of my most anticipated books of 2024 and always remember the higher you climb the harder you fall, and boy did this one fall. I wasn't excited for this one due to the celebrity tell all potential it had; I had followed AMT for years on Instagram and had already been a fan of her art. When I first started reading this I was chalking up my difficulty getting into it to the fact that this is a debut novel so growing pains are to be expected but as I fought and fought to convince myself to read it I had to start really looking at why so I gave it one last try and said that if I can't at least pin point what is making it an unenjoyable read for me then I would continue on. About 25% of the way I started being able to sense a pattern in what I disliked about the book. It wasn't the writing, which if I'm being honest, was actually better than I anticipated; it was the content. She makes it very clear that she doesn't like men and that they are not to be trusted which- girl, same- but then she would start to expand on why and then give her personal examples and they just weren't good. I don't know if this book needed to be written years later when she really had a chance to grow from her experiences but there was this sense of AMT being so lost and it was never resolved. The things she did question or work to improve were not the things that needed to be. Her huge complaints and the cause of all her life issues were those of a teenage girl. AMT never had anyone in her life give her tough love and it shows. Someone else said that this book is the result of an artist's temperament without actually being an artist and as soon as I heard it rang true. She's just coming off as winey and not self-aware and there was only so much of that I could take.

This was DNFd at 30%.

As much as I wanted to love this I couldn’t. The way this comes off is that the author never fully accepted her diagnosis or the reason why she checked herself into the hospital to begin with.