An entertaining essay collection leaning into dark humor, mainly about Scaachi’s divorce. Chocolate, Lime Juice, Ice Cream was my favorite essay and one that I think any millennial women (maybe all women) can relate to about the ways we & society hardly judge our bodies.

Finished Reading

Pre-Read Notes:

I was drawn to this one because of that bright green cover with the brass knuckles with a wedding ring on the appropriate finger hold. Anyone who's been married knows that sometimes a happy marriage turns into a metaphorical brawl, often over very little. The cover images also suggest a dark humor I think I'll appreciate. Looking forward to this one!

Final Review

"[...M]arriage has always felt high stakes, like if you get it wrong, the universe could stop still on its axis." p12

Review and recommendations

"I have spent so much of my own life trying to assess whether I have any power or not. I never get closer to an answer." p108

Reading Notes

Favorite Essays:
1. "A Comprehensive List of Everything My Dad Has Called Bergdorf Goodman"
2. "Parvati Stands in Flames"

A Few Words about the Essays:
1. "Parvati Stands in Flames" - An essay about a family defined by trauma bonds. I related to this essay in its tone and topic. It's tough to write about your messed up family whom you love to bits.
2. "A Close Read" - A reckoning with the pandemic and the perpetrators of her own Me-Too moments.
3. "Chocolate, Lime Juice, Ice Cream" - "Here are some things I would rather do in public than write about my body... : Punch my cat in the face , eat a leech, have sex with an impolite wolf, allow someone to watch me try to pluck an ingrown hair from the most tender part of my groin." p53
4. "Two Stars" - A piece on the vulnerability of getting divorced in public life.
5. "Lolita, Later" - An interesting take on Lolita and real-life age-gap romances.
6. "Auspicious" - I’m not alone unless my mother leaves me alone . I’m not alone until I am alone for good. p151
7. "Kali Starts a Fire" - "What I wanted was space—sometimes literally. I wanted it to be possible for me to carefully and thoughtfully build a rocket for one, outfitted with the most powerful engine known to humanity, big enough just for my body and maybe a paperback or two, a few packs of Dramamine, and maybe my good pair of glasses." p159
8. "A Comprehensive List of Everything My Dad Has Called Bergdorf Goodman" - This one is cute and possibly my favorite in the collection.

Rating: 🔥🔥🔥🔥 /5 fires to start and end this collection!
Recommend? yes
Finished: Mar 8 '25
Format: accessible digital arc, NetGalley
Read this book if you like:
📓 nonfiction
💍 personal essays
❤️‍🩹 Marriage gone bad
🙃 Sarcastic humor

Thank you to the author Scaachi Koul, publishers St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for an accessible advance digital copy of SUCKER PUNCH. I found an accessible digital copy on Libby. All views are mine.
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This is, perhaps, a strange thing to say, but I love a good divorce book. There’s just something so inevitably honest and relatable to me, and reading through others’ experiences with divorce often helps me better articulate my experience of my own. There’s a lot of divorce memoirs out there these days (lucky me!), and *Sucker Punch* is one of my new favorites. Scaachi is an incredibly sharp, funny writer — but there’s a tenderness in this book that reflects the soft vulnerability of divorce. Her writing feels more reflective than usual, even more self-aware than in her first book because, well, I think she is more of both; the result of both growing older and growing apart from someone you once promised to love forever. Most of the book’s essays were pretty long, but I found myself speeding through them quickly, impressed by the different stories and experiences Scaachi braided together into a singular narrative. Even if you haven’t been divorced, even if you don’t love their new genre of memoir like I do, I think most would love this collection for the ways it touches on family, facing mistakes, and strengthening the relationship we share with ourselves.

Probably not a book I should have started on my honeymoon... but alas. I love Scaachi's writing, it is as if I am gossiping with a bestie. She share the story of her divorce and all that comes with it. This book made me cry, laugh, and most importantly, call my mom.

I have always loved Scaachi Koul's biting, funny, and still emotional writing and this book is even better than I hoped! It takes real bravery to get this kind of introspection through some of the most painful periods of your life and the way she connected everything to her religion/culture and family outside of marriage was really beautiful. If you enjoy her writing, you'll definitely enjoy this read and if you are new to her style, the book will still be a great welcome to new readers!

This very personal collection of essays was a great read! Koul’s talks about her divorce, sexual assault, how it feels to think you are letting down your parents, among other things.

I loved her writing and how it sometimes felt like I was reading a novel and not someone’s real life experiences.

Sucker Punch by Scaachi Koul is an absolute knockout—funny, bitingly sharp, and deeply insightful. Koul’s voice is as witty and incisive as ever, effortlessly weaving humor into even the heaviest topics. Whether she’s unpacking the complexities of divorce, the trauma of assault, or the heartbreak of aging parents, she does so with a brutal honesty that never feels overwhelming. Instead, her sharp observations and self-deprecating humor make the essays both deeply personal and universally relatable.

What makes this collection shine is Koul’s ability to balance vulnerability with razor-sharp wit. One moment, you’re laughing at her perfectly timed quips; the next, you’re hit with an emotional gut punch that lingers long after you turn the page. It’s rare to find a book that tackles such weighty topics with this much grace and humor, but Sucker Punch does it flawlessly.

Scaachi Koul is hilarious even about the most heartbreaking times of life. Her evolution from a relationship and back to herself that started during the pandemic is harrowing and inspiring.

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.