I’ll get straight to the chase: I was really looking forward to this book and ultimately did not like it.

The misogynistic hatred of the word “like” has always bothered me. I was hoping for a history & analysis of the word, its uses, and a rebuttal of common criticisms “like” faces.

At its best, the book did that. Every time I considered setting the book down for good, I decided to keep going thanks to an analysis of linguistic research, a critique of earlier waves of feminism, and interesting discussion of conveying feeling through “like”, etc.

But as I said - I did not like this book. For something that seems so research based, it’s undermined by the number of personal anecdotes & assertions.

The structure is also utterly nonsensical and disjointed. There’s a myriad of long winded digressions into Obama era politics, Ice Spice, cobra Kai, AI, Love is Blind, and so much more. These digressions add little (if anything), read like ads, and are overall incredibly confusion inclusions. These digressions, as well as the author’s humor, really did not click for me.

This could’ve (and should’ve) been a short article.