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launb's review against another edition
4.0
This was my Margarita read - relaxing, funny, light but with depth and intoxicating, It also happens to be Dawn's pandemic cocktail of choice.
This is Dawn O'Porter's lockdown blog - which she published on Patreon during the first lockdown period in 2020. It made me laugh out loud (which is medicinal in a pandemic) because I have lived through much of the Isolation existential crisis she details. However she was existing in a strange vortex of riots, protests (she lives in Los Angeles), a pandemic and mourning the recent loss of a close friend. All this while feeding her family, entertaining and managing her children and pets, and trying to be creative. She copes with this by penning these blog/diary entries, popping CBD gummies, cooking and eating, and drinking many Margaritas!
This is Dawn O'Porter's lockdown blog - which she published on Patreon during the first lockdown period in 2020. It made me laugh out loud (which is medicinal in a pandemic) because I have lived through much of the Isolation existential crisis she details. However she was existing in a strange vortex of riots, protests (she lives in Los Angeles), a pandemic and mourning the recent loss of a close friend. All this while feeding her family, entertaining and managing her children and pets, and trying to be creative. She copes with this by penning these blog/diary entries, popping CBD gummies, cooking and eating, and drinking many Margaritas!
philippakmoore's review
5.0
I love Dawn and her hilarious writing. The stories she shares are incredibly relatable even though I'm not a celebrity living in LA, married to an actor and wrangling two kids and a menagerie of crazy animals!
Life in Pieces is Dawn's diary of lockdown in 2020 - she is coping with all the pandemic madness in the US, coupled with homeschooling her two children, missing the UK and her friends and family there, and trying to keep up with her own writing and workload. Alongside the world's very public grief and unravelling, Dawn is dealing with her own very private grief and dismantling of a world she knew. Just before the pandemic hit, she lost a close friend to suicide and she finds the forced isolation of lockdown conjures up many past griefs too, particularly the loss of her mother to breast cancer when she was very young.
That said, it's also pant-wettingly funny in places, in trademark Dawn style! She is refreshingly honest about her dependence on alcohol (I found myself craving a margarita once or twice while reading this!) and recreational drugs to get her through the days, and about the antics of her two young sons and pets, and about the pressures of living life in the public eye.
It's an intense read and I probably shouldn't have read it before bed (!) - it's very visceral in places and at times I felt like I'd had a few weed gummies myself!
But ultimately, this book is a tribute to human resilience and how we can carry on in the face of confusion, fear and heartbreak. When life as we know it ends, we can persevere, we can find things to bring joy to every day, we can still be kind and curious.
Thank you Dawn for sharing what life has been like for you during an intense, unpredictable year that isn't even over yet (gulp) and one I'm sure none of us will forget any time soon.
Many thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for an ARC.
Life in Pieces is Dawn's diary of lockdown in 2020 - she is coping with all the pandemic madness in the US, coupled with homeschooling her two children, missing the UK and her friends and family there, and trying to keep up with her own writing and workload. Alongside the world's very public grief and unravelling, Dawn is dealing with her own very private grief and dismantling of a world she knew. Just before the pandemic hit, she lost a close friend to suicide and she finds the forced isolation of lockdown conjures up many past griefs too, particularly the loss of her mother to breast cancer when she was very young.
That said, it's also pant-wettingly funny in places, in trademark Dawn style! She is refreshingly honest about her dependence on alcohol (I found myself craving a margarita once or twice while reading this!) and recreational drugs to get her through the days, and about the antics of her two young sons and pets, and about the pressures of living life in the public eye.
It's an intense read and I probably shouldn't have read it before bed (!) - it's very visceral in places and at times I felt like I'd had a few weed gummies myself!
But ultimately, this book is a tribute to human resilience and how we can carry on in the face of confusion, fear and heartbreak. When life as we know it ends, we can persevere, we can find things to bring joy to every day, we can still be kind and curious.
Thank you Dawn for sharing what life has been like for you during an intense, unpredictable year that isn't even over yet (gulp) and one I'm sure none of us will forget any time soon.
Many thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for an ARC.
seclement's review
2.0
I love Dawn O'Porters books. I have read most of them. I was quite excited to read this one, but I really should have looked more closely at what it was. It is a book about lockdown, but only the first few months. Most of it is written as diary entries. I cannot imagine a publisher deciding to publish this if it were by anyone else but a person who is already a celebrity. It is literally just her thoughts on a semi-daily basis over the first few months, written in a way that is meant to be relatable because she is in a bit of a shambles but it feels wildly out of touch. Remember those videos of Hollywood celebrities during the first few months of lockdown, where they were trying to be like "hey, we are in this together" but they were in their lush properties and actually completely out of touch? This was mostly a book like that. The fact that she also talks about lockdown as though it is past tense (the book ends in July) is also wildly out of touch, but probably more so a sign that she is in America where they have never even flattened the curve and "lockdowns" have meant that you can still go to Target but you have to wear a mask.
I struggled to rate this book because I do really like her work, and there are some bits in between the diary entries that are really good, and genuinely introspective. It's also difficult to rate because we are still in this, and it's not ending any time soon. There is a reason that historians don't go back and read diaries about events until long after they happen, and also a reason why very few diaries are ever published like this. If you have ever had a diary/journal and you wrote it in a really self-conscious way, like someone was going to read it, you will know how cringeworthy it is when you go back and read it. I don't blame Dawn O'Porter for wanting to write it, and there are genuinely funny moments, but it really doesn't strike the right balance between "I am such a mess like the rest of you!" and "I am really so caught up in my own life that I have completely lost sight of how out of touch and privileged I am". I kind of wish I hadn't read it now, as it feels so self-indulgent and I just don't know why such books are being published.
So....if you want to read a diary about someone hanging out in their LA home with their kids, pets, and famous spouse, drinking a lot and eating a lot of edibles, writing stuff but not enduring the Zoom/Teams/Extra work hell that a lot of us have had to deal with, then this might be the book for you. I think I am going to keep it on my shelf and re-visit it in a few years time to see if the book reads differently after we've all had some time to process all of this.
I struggled to rate this book because I do really like her work, and there are some bits in between the diary entries that are really good, and genuinely introspective. It's also difficult to rate because we are still in this, and it's not ending any time soon. There is a reason that historians don't go back and read diaries about events until long after they happen, and also a reason why very few diaries are ever published like this. If you have ever had a diary/journal and you wrote it in a really self-conscious way, like someone was going to read it, you will know how cringeworthy it is when you go back and read it. I don't blame Dawn O'Porter for wanting to write it, and there are genuinely funny moments, but it really doesn't strike the right balance between "I am such a mess like the rest of you!" and "I am really so caught up in my own life that I have completely lost sight of how out of touch and privileged I am". I kind of wish I hadn't read it now, as it feels so self-indulgent and I just don't know why such books are being published.
So....if you want to read a diary about someone hanging out in their LA home with their kids, pets, and famous spouse, drinking a lot and eating a lot of edibles, writing stuff but not enduring the Zoom/Teams/Extra work hell that a lot of us have had to deal with, then this might be the book for you. I think I am going to keep it on my shelf and re-visit it in a few years time to see if the book reads differently after we've all had some time to process all of this.
phillyvanillyy's review against another edition
3.0
It was ok... I'm sorry that I couldn't like it more. Don't get me wrong, I'm usually a big fan of Dawn's work (Cows and So Lucky? Hilarious!) But this one just didn't float my boat as much. Yes, there were some laugh out loud bits, and yes it was incredibly moving when she spoke about Caroline Flack's terribly tragic death. I actually cried then, because I lost my best friend at the age of 35 - in very different circumstances - and it is a horrible horrible thing to have to go through. And, yes, I've had a similar lockdown experience with two boys to keep occupied, too much good food and a glass or two most nights... But, overall, as I said at the beginning, it was just "ok".
bianca89279's review against another edition
4.0
I had no idea who Dawn O'Porter was, I saw her latest book advertised in the publisher's newsletter and on the socials, so I downloaded it when it became available on Overdrive.
O'Porter is a British writer and TV presenter. She happens to be married to Chris O'Dowd, the Irish actor, or O'Dowd is married to her. They have two young children and live in LA.
This book is made up of diary entries and additional thoughts from February until the middle of the this year. Of course, at the core of everything is the plague, I mean Corona and what that enticed for her - the anxiety, doom scrolling, being always at home with her under five boys, a lot of cooking, drinking and getting high, lots of Facetime, Zoom and a shit lot of cleaning of, well, shit and other excrements from the kids and her pets. O'Porter is also grief-stricken as one of her best friends committed suicide. This is about the ups and downs of daily life, of trying to hold it together, dealing with grief, while also appreciating one's privilege and some of the unexpected benefits of the lockdown, such as the opportunity to truly slow down.
I liked O'Porter's writing style and she's a terrific narrator. Listening to her talk so much about food and drinking did make me hungry and almost made me want to take up drinking. Other than that, this felt like a conversation between girlfriends where you waffle on about kids, partners, appointments, chores, cooking and a million of other things, both small and big.
O'Porter is a British writer and TV presenter. She happens to be married to Chris O'Dowd, the Irish actor, or O'Dowd is married to her. They have two young children and live in LA.
This book is made up of diary entries and additional thoughts from February until the middle of the this year. Of course, at the core of everything is the plague, I mean Corona and what that enticed for her - the anxiety, doom scrolling, being always at home with her under five boys, a lot of cooking, drinking and getting high, lots of Facetime, Zoom and a shit lot of cleaning of, well, shit and other excrements from the kids and her pets. O'Porter is also grief-stricken as one of her best friends committed suicide. This is about the ups and downs of daily life, of trying to hold it together, dealing with grief, while also appreciating one's privilege and some of the unexpected benefits of the lockdown, such as the opportunity to truly slow down.
I liked O'Porter's writing style and she's a terrific narrator. Listening to her talk so much about food and drinking did make me hungry and almost made me want to take up drinking. Other than that, this felt like a conversation between girlfriends where you waffle on about kids, partners, appointments, chores, cooking and a million of other things, both small and big.
jessorella's review against another edition
4.0
Dawn has such a relatable and honest writing style, and while I expect it's bound to rub some people up the wrong way (who will no doubt accuse her of oversharing), I think you know what you're going into when you pick up one of her books.
In LIFE IN PIECES Dawn writes searingly honestly and humorously about motherhood, the pandemic, eating and body image, and the sudden and tragic spectre of grief. I think there is something in this book for everyone to relate to, but it's specifically good - I think - for mothers who had to get young children through 2020 lockdown. I think it's brave of her to be so no-holds-barred about what it was like to be a parent during that time, when we were all slowly losing our minds and yet trying to keep up a good pretence. Dawn doesn't do that here, and I think that's really valuable to be so honest about the things you didn't get "right". My son is 16 now and I would love to read Dawn's thoughts on motherhood as her sons go through their teenage years!
A funny, emotional, starkly honest and entertaining read. Thank you for sharing, Dawn. And my thanks also to NetGalley for the review copy.
In LIFE IN PIECES Dawn writes searingly honestly and humorously about motherhood, the pandemic, eating and body image, and the sudden and tragic spectre of grief. I think there is something in this book for everyone to relate to, but it's specifically good - I think - for mothers who had to get young children through 2020 lockdown. I think it's brave of her to be so no-holds-barred about what it was like to be a parent during that time, when we were all slowly losing our minds and yet trying to keep up a good pretence. Dawn doesn't do that here, and I think that's really valuable to be so honest about the things you didn't get "right". My son is 16 now and I would love to read Dawn's thoughts on motherhood as her sons go through their teenage years!
A funny, emotional, starkly honest and entertaining read. Thank you for sharing, Dawn. And my thanks also to NetGalley for the review copy.