An incredible memoir of womanhood and mental health. I loved the unflinching honestly the alternating timeline of stories. I’d absolutely recommend this book to anyone who has struggled with mental health, or anyone who has complex feelings about men.

This book was incredible, and I read it in one day. I don’t think I’ve ever been so gripped by a nonfiction book. Anna describes the experience of being a woman interacting with men in a way that resonated deeply that I’ve never read articulated so well. I hope she writes more books; I will read them all. I read this as an advanced reader copy but will be buying the hardcover.

I was deeply impressed by the self reflection and insight Tendler shared within these page; the honesty that the author has recognized within herself and shared is remarkable and is one of my favorite books of the year so far.

No tawdry details, no tell-all. What this is is a beautifully written memoir which focuses on mental wellness and conveys so many of her experiences that, unfortunately, many people born female can relate to. I’m 50 and recognized myself in situations I was in in my younger years. It really upsets me that these experiences have really begun to seem synonymous with being a young woman - I wish that mental health and wellness were recognized as being equally important to physical health care.

Anna Marie Tendler is a talented creator and one whose future works I’m looking forward to - Men Have Called Her Crazy was a highly compelling read and has my strong recommendation.



Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the DRC

The year is 2024. The theme is female rage.

The author really digs into how a male dominant society shapes women's lives and mental health. I found myself relating to so many pieces of this book - to the point where I felt Tendler give voice to parts of my life that I didn't have the words for.

I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity to read this book and I believe it will resonate with a lot of adult women.

I am dumbfounded by just how special this book is. I truly felt every word on a cellular level. Anna did such a spectacular job of digging into her past “why’s” in contrast to what she was going through during her treatment stay & thereafter. There were also so many moments of dry humor that I really appreciated, and one particular chapter of this book actually destroyed me (ily Petunia.) I very highly recommend picking up this memoir when it’s released in August - thank you to Simon & Schuster for the ARC!
PS - DBT is just the best.

I loved this so much! I don't normally rate memoirs but I want to give this one 5 stars! Readers should not expect a celebrity tell-all about their favorite comedian. This will be so relatable for all different women. This memoir deeply resonated with me as someone who is watching friends have children and not feeling the for certain urge to be a mother. Anna perfectly describes the weight of being female and how that defines women's depression, anxiety, thoughts. I will be recommending to everyone. Thank you Anna for your honesty and vulnerability!

I love Anna Marie Tendler's artwork and am a huge fan, so let's start there. I also did not expect this to be a salacious tell-all about the demise of her high-profile marriage. I didn't need it to be! I see the impulse to want that, but I don't need it. And this book functions without it on the whole. There are moments where I wish she could have dug a little further into her marriage or unpacked a bit more, but who am I to say why she didn't do so? I think this is a well-written and thoughtful reflection on what seems like a stressful and tumultuous period of life. I related to a lot of what Tendler discusses and found it comforting to see so much of myself to varying degrees represented on the page. At times, it felt disjointed and a little simplistic, but it may have had opportunities to be deeper. However, this did not stop me from really liking what I read. To be honest, I would be interested in seeing fiction from Tendler as her writing was lovely but often felt too rooted in remembering the facts first. Overall I do recommend this book.

It's a very strong 3.75/3.8 for me.

Anna Marie Tendler’s “Men Have Called Her Crazy” is a beautifully written memoir that recounts her voluntary stay in a psychiatric hospital for help with self harm and suicidal ideation while also exploring the relationships and experiences that had a profound impact on her life. I found Anna’s writing to be honest, clever, and, at times, heartbreakingly relatable. This book made me laugh, cry, and further resent the patriarchy. I definitely recommend this memoir to women who have struggled with anxiety and depression and those who have inexplicably found themselves jumping through hoops to stay in the good graces of crappy men. Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the eARC in exchange for an honest review <3

I have been following Anna Marie Tendler online for many years now. I love her art and the personality she shows through social media. I also love that her and I have similar birth charts, but that may just mean something to only me. I now love that Tendler has shown an extremely vulnerable side that we rarely glimpse from online profiles. Because I've been a fan for so many years, I thought I knew what to expect from this book. In moments, my expectations were there but overall this book exceeded anything I anticipated and went above and beyond. This memoir focuses on Tendler's mental health journey while using personal, specifically romantic, relationships as a lens in which to view her and as case studies. Her story is told through an alternating linear vs flashback structure, switching off every chapter. This way we simultaneously reflect with her and anticipate what is to come next.

While I have been a fan of Tendler, I had no idea what to expect from her longform writing. The way she structured her memoir in tandem with her ability to hold both critical and compassionate thoughts toward herself blew me away. I felt honored that she has trusted us as an audience with her difficult memories and painful moments of low self worth. I related very deeply with so many of her experiences and reactions to those experiences, as I believe many other women will too. I often have a difficult time voicing these kinds of feelings to the people closest to me so for her to find the words and create a book from them then share that outwardly with us is something to cherish. The structure worked extremely well for me, I felt like I was growing right alongside her. There is a reoccurring theme of Tendler struggling to feel like her life is moving forward or like she is succeeding in any "big" way. This is something I have been struggling with for some time now, feeling like I'm in a constant backslide. To hear someone I have viewed as a successful person for almost a decade now share that they have been reliant on others incomes and have felt dispassionate and disconnected from what they love was eye-opening to me. It helped me realize I am not out of time to find what I need to feel a sense of fulfillment. This memoir is a reminder that things come in time.

My last thought I want to share is that if you are going into this book for a celebrity style "tell-all" and you are looking for dirt or even mentions of a certain someone, don't bother. Believe it or not, a memoir written by a woman is about the woman herself. It is honest and scary and comforting and sorrowful and joyful, and it's better than any speculations I saw of what it could have been when first announced. I also keep seeing people say "every woman should read this book" and while I understand that and agree, I think we should be encouraging men to read this book moreso. Tendler is a white, ciswoman and found a unique and new way to create a feminist conversation that can apply easily to intersectionality which I frankly find impressive at this point in time.

Thank you, Anna for sharing yourself with the world and letting the world into your haunted Victorian dollhouse.

This is a brave book. Anna Marie Tendler really lays it all on the line- except for her marriage. I didn’t read this because of her marriage, but I do admittedly know who she is because of her ex-husband. I think that in some senses, this book does suffer because of the erasure of what led to the dissolution of her marriage. We spend a lot of time cataloguing the men in her life, but her longest relationship isn’t here. Sometimes books seem like they needed a bit longer before being published so things can settle down or give space to certain events (like Jenny Pentland’s book about Roseanne or Jill Duggar’s Counting the Cost which I feel would both change a lot if their abusive parents were deceased), and this falls in that camp.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR AUGUST. This is one of the best memoirs I have ever read.

This book follows two timelines: one where Anna is staying at a psychiatric facility and one where we follow her relationships with men throughout her life.
This book is so honest and open. Anna really puts everything on the table as far as her mental health and struggles in past relationships and how they shaped her as a person. For the people looking for “tea” in regard to her marriage with John Mulaney….you won’t find any here. Anna instead doesn’t give him the light of day and focuses on her shorter relationships both prior to and after her marriage.
I really appreciated the commentary on mental health and mental healthcare. You can tell this book was therapeutic for her to process that entire journey.

This book is sad girl femme rage at its finest. This book is the perfect example of what really makes women downward spiral.…and then get called crazy for it.

Huge thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

MEN HAVE CALLED HER CRAZY is a raw and honest look at Anna Marie Tendler’s experience in a mental hospital and how it changed the trajectory of her downward spiral of a life. I'm so sorry men are men Anna. We kind of are the worst. I was floored at the way the male doctor diagnosed her at the end of her stay. I get the anger girl. That kind of fragile masculinity and lack of accountability makes me mad enough to flip a table Teresa Giudice style. It’s the cis, white, hetero privilege for me. And I want to remind you that this is a memoir, so just remember that these medical professionals are actually still out there saying the same things to their female patients. When I wasn’t relating to Anna’s struggles with her own mental health, I enjoyed seeing the friendships she made with the other women in the hospital and how beneath all of the chaos and mental illness, she still found slivers of hope, healing and community.

I admire the frank discussions on self-harm, suicide, self-hatred, anxiety, depression and the warranted female rage that all men need to listen to. I dunno, maybe society would be better off? Or something. Is this mic on? Can we stop dating underaged girls if we’re almost forty? It’s disgusting, but interesting to see how those toxic patterns are created from traumas and make you attracted to the things that hurt you in the first place. I can possibly see how some might call out Tendler’s privilege, but she acknowledges it to an extent. Anna will have to brave these storms the rest of her life, but at least she’s equipped with the appropriate skills to navigate those murky waters now. Special thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. This one’s for my depression girlies - lots of good quotes for your journals in this one. Just know there are lots of trigger warnings in here revolving around mental illness, suicide, self-harm, ED’s, etc.

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RIP PETUNIA. YOU WERE A REAL ONE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

This was so stunning. It was raw, vulnerable, and really made me feel seen as a girl who has struggling both in love and in trying to make my brain work for me rather than base my daily activities off its incapability to keep a chemical balance.

This book is not for everyone. I think it’s going to upset a lot of people who aren’t willing to look at the value in what she’s discussing. It’s also frustrating that people are expecting this to be focused on Anna’s previous relationship when this is HER story, not his. She is amazing, strong & I loved this as painful and hard as it was to read.

thank you @netgalley and @simonbooks for letting me read this one <3

‘men have called her crazy’ has been on my top 2024 book release list for months and it definitely did not disappoint. i may be biased, as a memoir lover already, but anna marie tendler’s (@annamtendler) voice and experiences shine through in a way that is deeply moving and startling in the best way.

tendler’s narrates the memoir through her time in a psych hospital from the beginning of 2021, while interweaving in memories of her childhood and teenage years. tendler details her experiences of depression and suicidal ideation (trigger warning for future readers), while also highlighting the beautiful relationships she builds with her fellow housemates at the hospital, friends, and her dog, petunia.

there is so much i could say about the importance of vulnerability of this memoir, but everyone should just read it themselves.

overall: 5⭐️

Beautifully written, funny, self reflective, and brimming with feminist rage. Those seeking a celebrity tell-all about the author’s ex husband won’t find it; he is mentioned only in passing and never by name. Rather this is an exploration of Tendler’s mental health struggles, female friendships, and relationships with men.

Anna Marie Tendler! My queen! I had no idea what to expect going into this, and I'll be the first to admit that I was hoping that there'd be some tea - I'm a shallow reader, I suppose. By the time I ended the book, I wanted to send a handwritten letter to Ms. Tendler to apologize for my folly and tell her that this book, like, actually changed me. Empowering, complex, devastating. For every woman who is tired. For anyone that struggles with mental health. NOT for men who pull the "not all men" card.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

TW: self-harm, depression, anxiety, misogyny

If you're picking up this book to get dirt on Anna Marie Tendler's relationship with her ex-husband, you're out of luck (also, gross. a woman is much more than the man by her side). This is a book about Tendler's experience with mental illness, which began in childhood. It gets beneath the beautifully-curated images on her Instagram feed to the three-dimensional woman underneath.

I received a digital galley from NetGalley.

This book isn't gossipy so don't read it for that reason- and really you shouldn't read it for that reason anyhow.

Tendler writes about how her mental health was been impacted by her relationship with men. As a person who also has a pretty severe anxiety I identified with a lot of her thoughts and it helped me understand that my anxiety isn't as odd as I think it is.

This is not a tell-all of Anna Marie Tendler's ex-husband and their relationship. Remove that from the narrative.

This is a memoir of mental health. I've read quite a few books of this genre and this is a well-written one. Tendler's openness of her mental health struggles is admirable. Told in alternating chapters, Tendler opens up about her life, while at an inpatient mental health facility and recounting incidents and relationships that led her to that place.

Early childhood, teen years and the early 20's are all explored as are complicated relationships: parents, siblings, friends and men. I truly hope the young women who are fans of Tendler will really read the stories of the bad relationships and see the mistakes. There are important lessons there. Tendler doesn't hold back, bringing the reader into her emotional states at varying parts of her life.

Tendler's openly discusses her aimlessness and her varying career paths. Once she finally reaches her photography and storytelling career, it was almost a sigh of relief that she has finally found something of her own, a career, a way to support herself. It's also a look at the deep love that she has with her friends. It's a refreshing look at how powerful female friendship is.

It's hard with memoirs. Reviewing them is almost like reviewing the person in real-time. Half of this book is still in the recent past and some of the stories showed little growth. The dependency on men is a large part of this book - despite a rather recurring theme of "I hate men."

Overall, this book is an excellent memoir and I'm sure many young women will love it and shoot it straight to the best-sellers list.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read and review this book in advance of its release.