Unfortunately, this book was totally not for me. I've read many of the author's essays over the years and while I wouldn't say I necessarily "enjoy" them all, I do find her to be a sharp and very funny writer. But perhaps she doesn't have enough distance from her own divorce yet—those essays seemed raw and too rageful to really work as pieces of writing, whereas the essays about her family of origin were much more emotional and fully realized. I'll keep reading her work for sure in the future, but I won't be returning to this one.

Scaachi Koul’s Sucker Punch is a sharp, funny, and honest collection of essays about identity, culture, and the weirdness of modern life. Some essays hit harder than others, but her mix of humor and vulnerability keeps it engaging. If you like smart, witty writing with a personal touch, this one’s definitely worth a read.

I enjoy Scaachi Koul's unvarnished honesty about everything she encounters, including herself. Her writing voice is engaging and compelling, so much so that even when I realized I was not enjoying this book, I still felt compelled to keep reading. She may not be the most likeable protagonist in the personal essays genre, but she is truthful, and she writes with staggering honesty about some of the hardest experiences a person can have. For that, I am grateful to have read her work. Five stars for sharing it all, Ms. Koul, even the parts that made me know we wouldn't be friends.

It's one of the best books I've read and I absolutely loved it. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking to pick up a non-fiction read.

Not my cup of tea, but I still enjoyed discovering this author.
Thanks to Netgalley and the author, the publishing house, for this book in advcance, in exchange of my honest review.

Sharp, biting, and unexpectedly tender, Koul’s second essay collection is just as compelling as her first.

In her debut, she explored life as the daughter of Indian immigrants and her engagement to a white man. This time, she tackles the pandemic, the sudden end of her marriage, her mother’s illness, and her own experience with sexual assault.

The section on her assault is particularly gut-wrenching, showcasing her remarkable ability to capture the tangled emotions of shame, guilt, and anger with raw precision. Yet even in such deeply personal moments, she weaves in her signature humor, making the heaviness more digestible without diminishing its weight.

This balance is what makes Koul’s writing stand out—millennial wit threaded through serious, introspective themes. Her reflections on body image, family, identity, and self-worth are infused with honesty, sharp humor, and pop-culture savvy. A must-read, especially for women.

📚: Sucker Punch by Scaachi Koul
⭐️: 3/5

A collection of essays marked by growing up, the COVID-19 pandemic, an end of a marriage, and finding oneself.

At one point, Koul writes, "I think about my original sin a lot, my choice to start writing about myself in the early 2010s, during the personal essay boom..." and I feel as though this summed up the read for me a bit. This read comes across as self serving (because it is) and also just a bit grating. It may just be me, but Koul's written prose just didn't work completely for me - and sometimes a journal should stay as that, a journal, and not for public consumption (as so many of these read as).

The upside: I did audiobook part of this and really enjoyed the listening experience far more than the reading experience though. I'd give the audiobook closer to a 4 and the physical read a 2 - so we're splitting the difference with a 3 star rating.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press via @netgalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. Sucker Punch is out now.

In truth, I have been a fan of Scaachi Koul for years. From following her on Twitter, then Instagram, and then subscribing to her SubStack, Scaachi has always been one of my favorite people on the internet. Her writing is funny and sharp, feeling so much more like a letter from a friend that is a talented writer, Sucker Punch is all at once funny, touching, and relatable (without being trite or lofty).

Author Koul's funny. Not innocently amusing, funny. She's written before this (<i>One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter</i>) about her immigrant-to-Canada parents and her ongoing battles with their traditional expectations versus her Canadian ones. She had, then, a bit about her elaborate wedding...now it's about her pandemic experience, her mother's health crisis, the collapse of her marriage after that astonishing wedding...and something that's never been dealt with in her life, let alone her prose, before: she was sexually assaulted.

I do not know, or know of, a single solitary woman who does not have a story about her body being at the minimum threatened with sexual violence. Reading about it is, it seems, a means of creating solidarity and permission to say out loud that it's happened to you, like the very public #MeToo movement that's been bringing crimes to light that men are just as glad to have swept under the rug.

A proper millennial, Author Koul does her level-best to spin these facts of her life as...not funny, really, but sources or wry humor as she goes about coping with her wounds from them. I think a lot of women love to read these stories as a way to get perspective on the pain in their own lives. I'm aware of the reality and the awfulness of abuse in intimate relationships. It's not fun, and I myownself am not a fan of it as a topic for humorous coping.

Her other coping mechanism is rage. Full-throated, loudly expressed rage. That one I know from the inside; I do not think it is beneficial, nor appropriate, to valorize is as Author Koul does, while using humor to defuse its painful and destructive consequences on everyone...literally everyone...around her.

This is from my own experience: Go get counseling. Stay in counseling the rest of your life. Nothing will remove the rage. Work towards ways to minimize its footprint in your life, and the lives of those around you.

Three stars because it's trenchant and timely.

I went in knowing nothing about the book or author. I liked the title and cover.
But I did enjoy the collection of essays covering the destruction and the aftermath of the Scaachi's marriage. It was raw and funny at parts and slightly drawn out in others, and some felt like a Sucker Punch...
I'm very interested to read her first book for comparison of her relationship.
Thank you, Netgalley, publisher, and author for the ARC.

Normally I enjoy reading memoirs and books of essays, but I am afraid this book didn't really resonate with me. It felt like reading about one long pity party. No doubt there are many readers who will better relate to the author's experiences with body image, date rape, interracial marriage and divorce. Personally I need something more uplifting to read at this time.

Whenlife gives you lemons, you make lemonade. Scaachi Koul gives us her recipe to the lemonade the pandemic made of her planned life. This is her second book of essays and short pieces that lay out the story of her life.....you know the one.....nobody is going to believe this stuff could really happen....but it does and it did. Read this one, share it. It will make you feel not so alone with your life's circus.

Sucker Punch is the perfect title for this absolutely gut-wrenching collection of essays by Scaachi Koul.

Koul brings the reader into her world as she navigates a divorce while balancing familial ties, cultural layers, and a very online life. With wit and humor, as well as honest and unflinching prose, Koul manages to put words to feelings that were at once familiar and foreign. Having gone through a divorce myself, I was laughing out loud, clutching my heart, and time and time again thinking, “exactly!” even though so much about our lives are different.

I’ve been a fan on Koul’s writing for years, and I continue to be. Her voice is unique and her ability to tie in her culture, her family, and her friends into her writing makes you feel like you know her (though she also reflects in the book about the perils of a line of work that has made readers feel entitled to her life — I’m sorry, Scaachi!)

I loved this book so much! If you’re looking for a funny and engaging read, you’ll love this too!

A deeply personal and hilarious essay collection focused on what it is to be a woman in various contexts, specifically daughterhood, wifedom, ex-wifedom, single situationships and sexual assault survivor. Wryly illustrating the perils of modern womanhood, this collection is perfect for fans of Samantha Irby and Sloane Crosley. Very relatable material for millennial women in particular. Thank you to St. Martins Press and MacMillan Audio for the gifted copies.

This is the first book I have read of Scaachi Koul. It was essays of her life and the things she has gone through. It felt so honest, and sometimes it felt like she was figuring things out as she wrote. There is a lot she went through, and she is working through it, in a way that is right for her.
I received an ARC from St. Martin's Press through NetGalley.

I loved Scaachi Koul's first essay collection, so I was deilghted to receive an advance copy of her second, Sucker Punch. There have been an array of works of non-fiction coming post-pandemic about divorce, and Koul's work stands at the top of the group for it's humor and honesty. It's a book for anyone who thinks life is going to go one way and realizes that life has punched them in the face.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me.

Thanks very much to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC of Sucker Punch by Scaachi Koul, another brilliant writer whose work, I'm ashamed to admit, I was unfamiliar with before reading this. I absolutely loved Koul's sharp, smart voice, at times both hilarious and heartbreaking. Like all great writing, excellent essays are not in the *what* of what happened, but the *how* of its retelling. Scaachi Koul has to be one of the best working in this medium today. I also loved how she continues to analyze and deconstruct her past published work here. I've already ordered a hard copy of Sucker Punch and a copy of her prior book.

Unfortunately, I felt sucker punched as I was reading this one. Scaachi Koul supposed her marriage and life after Covid would resemble what it’s supposed to, but instead the lock down turned everything on its head. Used to fighting with everyone and for everything, Koul comes across as a victim, time and time again, and I could not relate to the constant whining over the outcomes of her experiences and the choices she’s made. Koul’s need to fit in and please everyone seems to explode in the most minute detail, and I wanted to yell to her “would you just be yourself?!” Heavy hitter topics of date rape, race and body image were explored, but I couldn’t relate to her internal dialogue about much of it. Maybe as a Gen Xer, this missed my generational attitude, but my patience for the majority of the book and its voice ran out early on. It seemed to me a long journey of self discovery which I was annoyed with and struggled through. I’m so disappointed, I really wanted to like this one.

Thank you St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the ARC!

I loved this book so much. It was deeply personal, and I almost felt like I was reading the author's diary at times. I am sure this was a challenging book to write and to relive, but I am so thankful Koul told her stories for all of us to read.

Thank you again for the ARC!

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC: My rating is 3.5 and rounded up. Koul writes well and this memoir--it's not really stand alone essays, of the end of her marriage is still so raw. It's full of anger, betrayal and feels as though she hasn't really processed the many traumas to the point of clarity. She writes of her marriage/divorce/betrayal, her mother's illness, her own issues, her rape, the pandemic--just a boatload of trauma, and while the writing is compelling it's somehow nebulous. It's both oversharing and undersharing.