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A review by liralen
Everything You Ever Wanted: A Memoir by Jillian Lauren
4.0
Lauren was writing [b:Some Girls|7455932|Some Girls My Life in a Harem|Jillian Lauren|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348514670s/7455932.jpg|9504597] at the time that the events of Everything You Ever Wanted were taking place, and while normally I'm not a huge fan of memoir-meta—that is, memoirists writing about writing their memoirs—it makes a lot of sense here because, well, it's part of the story. How do you become a parent when your uterus says no? How do you not, when it's the one thing you've been desperate to do? How do you reconcile a colourful past with a new, more 'traditional' role as 'mother'? How do you balance parent and writer? And, most pressingly, what do you do when there is clearly something wrong with your child, but doctors write it off?
As much as I loved Some Girls—which was a lot, considering that I'm hanging on to my copy despite the fact that I'm moving in a month and a half and really need to downsize my book collection—it would be hard for me to make an argument that it was better than Everything You Ever Wanted. Because...Everything is a harder story, I think. It doesn't have the 'you read a book about what?' factor to carry it through if for whatever reason things lag, and it doesn't need it. It's messy and honest and hopeful.
As much as I loved Some Girls—which was a lot, considering that I'm hanging on to my copy despite the fact that I'm moving in a month and a half and really need to downsize my book collection—it would be hard for me to make an argument that it was better than Everything You Ever Wanted. Because...Everything is a harder story, I think. It doesn't have the 'you read a book about what?' factor to carry it through if for whatever reason things lag, and it doesn't need it. It's messy and honest and hopeful.