Highly entertaining read about someone who lives a life so unlike mine or anyone I know that it was unbelievable at times. And that's why I love memoirs... or biographical essays or whatever we're calling this! The opportunity to peek into a whole different world!

Lola Kirke is the daughter of Simon Kirke, the drummer of Bad Company fame. Ms. Kirke has also made a name for herself as an actor and musician. I'll be honest, I had no idea who she, or any member of her family was... Sorry! But I picked this book up anyway, and flew right through it! Her essays are about her life as a younger sister and a daughter growing up in a wealthy, and let's be honest, pretty dysfunctional home. And bonus she is quite a funny, witty writer!

Growing up in the rock and roll music business, Lola Kirke and her family never grafted to New York when they transplanted from London. The Bohemian lifestyle of musician refugees is a chaotic way to grow up. Lola says that she was raised by wolves and she’d be right.

The Kirkes might be rich enough to own two homes with one in the Hamptons, but her parents had London working-class roots. Her musician father was on the road most of the year and her mother ran a boutique before getting her four children settled in New York’s West Village. The children wouldn’t live like trust babies. Their parents expected them to find an artistic trade and work at it until they were successful.

Their house had an open door to whomever rolled into town. For Lola, the highlights were watching The Rolling Stones perform from backstage and having Liv Tyler as a babysitter, but her parents fought. They were lovable rogues who weren’t good together and she spent much of her childhood wishing they could be happy.

Nola’s acting career started unconventionally. Answering the phone, she navigated the turmoil of infidelity and its resulting power struggles. Nola trained as an actor and played the narrator/writer in Mistress America, which is my favorite Greta Gerwig movie.

However, Hollywood’s tedious auditions wear her down after her initial successes. Her mother’s constant advice to ‘stay thin’ haunts her when she gets rejected for roles.

With time on her hands out in California, Nola discovers a secret brother who needs 24-hour care. She finds she has a place for tenderness for him. This begins her quest to find her real self—not the barely clothed woman she thought the world wanted.

Finding unexpected kindness and honesty from sex workers in her area, Nola seeks therapy and returns to her musical roots. She discovers a new way of living and loving. The Texan’s modesty soothes her brash New York personality, and they became a couple during Covid.

By the time Lola debuts at the Grand Old Opry, it’s the most comfortable she’s felt since she was a child.

Focusing on the difficulties of growing up female, Lola’s memoir centers on her parents’ devotion to their children. She picks painful stories about her sisters that show what it was like to grow up with too much and no boundaries. Lola can splash a story with vividness and no judgment--a rare ability.

I'd call her story, "The only home I have is in a song," and I hope she'll write more of what she finds.

3 stars- I went into this blindly not knowing Lola Kirke or her family. While some parts were interesting, ti just didn't grab me in the way I had hoped it would. Perhaps this would be a more captivating read for ones who already adore Lola. Thanks netgalley & the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

Such a great read to kick-off the year! I really enjoyed this memoir and had a fun time reading. I don't usually reach for memoirs, but I am so happy I did because I loved it!

A sharp lively memoir in vignettes that surprised me. Kirke is definitely and defiantly a child of privilege and parental connections but that's only the top layer. She's a lot more. Hers is a supremely dysfunctional family laced with unhappiness, addiction and tragedy- but also joy. Kirke maintains a light voice as she shines the light on celebrity and she's not afraid to make fun of herself. I wasn't familiar with her but I'm glad to have read this. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Gotta wonder what her family thought when they read it.

“Wild West Village–Not a Memoir”, contrary to its subtitle, is a celebrity memoir-in-essays with a twist. Actress and singer-songwriter Lola Kirke weaves together anecdotes from her eventful childhood in an eccentric rockstar family to her present-day life in an engaging and entertaining, almost weightless read.

I hadn’t really heard about the author before I received this review copy, but I certainly relate to her more now than I’d ever get to know any other celebrity stranger, celebrating her wins with her throughout her vulnerable book and rooting for her in the challenges she faces as she tries to find herself amid the chaos in her surroundings of addiction and affairs.

Because of the humorous writing style, the book perhaps doesn’t go as deep as other memoirs do when it comes to the emotional gravity, but this might just be what a contemporary reader needs when the market is flooded with stories of the bared hearts and souls of our world.

Well done Lola Kirke! Out January 28, 2025

In gratitude to Simon & Schuster for the invitation to review this title.

This book was such a fun read, and a great light first one to kick off 2025! I enjoyed reading about tender early memories the author shared with famous big sis. The author seems insightful about herself and does a good job describing incidents from her youth. This felt part memoir, part family mythology. Couldn’t stop reading it. There’s a narrative arc here which I appreciated.

I really enjoyed this memoir! Lola Kirke was funny, brutally honest, and vulnerable. Lola really conveys that it never to late to start something you are passionate about and go into full steam ahead. I also loved the fact that the book ended with her Grande Ole Opre debut. I would recommend this book to my friends and my followers.

Lola Kirke is a 'nepo baby' but in a way that she doesn't throw in anyone's face. Born into a family of disorder and the youngest, she didn't grow up surround by the best role models, so she's floundered for much of her life. Until she found country music...

Lola is honest and open about the disfunction that she grew up in and why it led her to Nashville. She's not trying to pull any strings to get on that Grand Ole Opry stages, she's going to do it on her terms.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Wow what a wild ride and life Lola has lived thus far. I loved reading more about her life, she and her family are fascinating and then there are also a smattering relatable thoughts she shares even though so much of her life is so unfathomable to most of us. She writes in a way that isn’t snobby and is very self-aware, which is a major feat in and of itself because she comes from so much privilege and such a famous family.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

Wild indeed! I enjoyed Lola's stories of growing up with a loving and challenging (and wealthy and famous) family.

The stories are emotional, funny, and highly entertaining. I was pleasantly surprised as you never know how compelling a celebrity memoir (or not a memoir) may be!

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read a copy.

While the author states it’s not a “tell-all”, she leaves in enough blind item style tidbits to keep the gossip hounds engaged. The pacing towards the end through me off a bit but the overall story felt like a peek into a wild, glamorous and sometimes dark world of the rich and noteworthy. Enough to make all the Midwestern girls thoroughly jealous of a childhood in Manhattan. Kirke balanced being funny, heartfelt and relatable. However, at times I wished some of the characters were more developed like her parents.

Great vacation or airplane read.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for a review.

While I’m not usually a memoir girlie, Lola Kirke’s “non-memoir” was such a fun read. This was a wild ride of emotions and despite not totally relating to her experiences, I found myself identifying with a lot of her emotional journey.

I sped through this and it was a great book to start the year off with!

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the eArc in exchange for my honest opinion!

The cover and title captured my attention, so without knowing anything about Lola Kirke or her apparently famous family, I dove into this memoir in essays.

I found most of the essays entertaining and Ms. Kirke’s snarky wit shines through in each vignette. It is not clear that the vignettes follow a chronological progression, nor is it clear how much time transpires between vignettes. While Ms. Kirke is funny, it was frequently hard reading about her loose upbringing amidst sex, drugs and rock and roll.

The book is one shocking situation after another and one example of her family’s dysfunctionality after another. The book abruptly concludes with with Lola making her debut on the Grand Ole Opry without any prelude of the usual struggles to achieve that pinnacle of success.

Lola’s biggest success is her epiphany about her family, her place in it, and their love.

“But in that moment I began to see: success was just success. It was not the key to love. Rather, it was a distraction from it. I had all my family’s love already. Our love was just a little chaotic.”

I am THAT reader who can be drawn into a book just by the title and cover. After reading Lola Kirke's (not a) memoir, I have to say that both title and cover are perfect for this book. Despite growing up in a life of wealth and privilege -- thanks to her rock star dad and designer mom -- Kirke's family life is chaotic, and it's very clear right from the beginning that Kirke strives for the attention and love from her older (and to her, cooler) sisters.

Wild West Village is a brutally honest account of various periods in Kirke's life -- a "no holds barred" type of book. It's a raw, vulnerable, and, at times, funny journey as Kirke tries to find her own path despite the roadblocks and detours that her family puts in front of her.

Thanks to #NetGalley and #Simon&Schuster for this electronic ARC of #WildWestVillage.

I was pleasantly surprised by how enraptured I was by Kirke’s writing! Raw and honest, yet not overly self-indulgent, I couldn’t get enough.

Lola Kirke, sister to “Girls” actress Jemima Kirke (among other notable siblings of hers) and sister-in-law to Penn Badgley, has managed something very tricky with her debut book – a “memoir” (although she doesn’t call it that) of a young B-list (maybe even C-list to be totally candid?) celebrity that doesn’t feel totally self-indulgent and unnecessary.

While Kirke’s childhood was chaotic and fairly unstable, she doesn’t write about it through a lens of self-pity. She’s also not pretending like she’s totally through it all, totally fixed. The writing itself sometimes mimics the chaos of her life – lots of characters are introduced for a few pages and then forgotten about. Sometimes she jumps around in time with her stories. But that’s not at all to say it is poorly written. In fact, I liked that it didn’t feel belabored or overwrought.

If you’re an adult who had a wild NYC upbringing, or always wished you did, you’ll enjoy this book. And for the rest of us I think you’ll admire the way Lola managed to navigate a childhood that sounds pretty nightmare-ish despite the veneer of glamour.

Thanks to NETGALLEY and Simon & Schuster for eARC (invited to review because of my input for Tendler's ‘Men Have Called Her Crazy’)

4.5 ★

This not-a-memoir memoir has sharp wit; Lola comes across as self-aware with even some satirical narcissism. She's clever in never naming things, like how she hinted and alluded to Amazon. It is *very* much nonlinear, with some blurbs being only a paragraph long, whilst others are longer. Sometimes the nonlinear leaps are a bit jarring, but Lola does a good job of letting you know what the time period is. A fairly quick read, which makes sense since she is on the younger side. I enjoyed this enough to look forward to more writings from Kirke, if there will be any! And I'm interested enough to read whatever her sibling(s) are allegedly releasing as well.

This is a funny book about Lola Kirke’s life growing up. She meets up with some interesting people. Very eclectic and a great read.

Really fun, cheeky memoir that had some surprising moments. The writing style was very engaging and felt like telling stories with a friend.