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allaboutfrodo 's review for:
Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love
by Jonathan Van Ness
Over the Top is not a book I would normally choose to read, as I have never heard of the author and never seen an episode of Queer Eye, old or new. However, I’m going to be guiding an online discussion, so I was planning on skimming it. I ended up reading it, so that says something about the book. It was very easy to read the author's friendly, breezy narrative voice.
This memoir is raw and revealing; also random (a school report on the Bill Clinton sex scandal is published in full?) and repetitive. Readers who know the author’s voice may rate it five stars; as someone who is not invested in the author, I’d say it could have used a good editor to tighten it up a bit. I read the ebook, and I noticed numerous typos.
I did love that the author choose to protect the privacy of people mentioned in the book by replacing their names with Russian aliases. The fact that he grew up in Quincy, not too far from where I live in west central Illinois, also added to my interest.
In the author’s acknowledgments, he thanks his mom first and then his first cat (aw), who “taught me to care for something and I would’ve never been able to survive my twenties without you.”
I had a hard time connecting with the author, since I am not LGBTQ+, never acted out with anonymous sex and unknown drugs, and never struggled with my self-worth the way the author did. However, I will definitely recommend this to people who don’t think they fit in, who are afraid their lives will only get worse, and who would benefit from hearing the author’s take on self-love, self-care, and self-worth. I also liked that he seems to be a super positive person, and although he talks about disturbing things and mistakes that he made, he does so in a positive, reflective way.
“Letting go of that idea that I needed to be normal or that I somehow wasn’t normal just because I needed to prioritize self-care to be healthy is the biggest gift I’ve ever given myself. Being normal is being completely unique, because nobody’s the same. Normal, honey? Who is she, anyway?” (p. 218)
This memoir is raw and revealing; also random (a school report on the Bill Clinton sex scandal is published in full?) and repetitive. Readers who know the author’s voice may rate it five stars; as someone who is not invested in the author, I’d say it could have used a good editor to tighten it up a bit. I read the ebook, and I noticed numerous typos.
I did love that the author choose to protect the privacy of people mentioned in the book by replacing their names with Russian aliases. The fact that he grew up in Quincy, not too far from where I live in west central Illinois, also added to my interest.
In the author’s acknowledgments, he thanks his mom first and then his first cat (aw), who “taught me to care for something and I would’ve never been able to survive my twenties without you.”
I had a hard time connecting with the author, since I am not LGBTQ+, never acted out with anonymous sex and unknown drugs, and never struggled with my self-worth the way the author did. However, I will definitely recommend this to people who don’t think they fit in, who are afraid their lives will only get worse, and who would benefit from hearing the author’s take on self-love, self-care, and self-worth. I also liked that he seems to be a super positive person, and although he talks about disturbing things and mistakes that he made, he does so in a positive, reflective way.
“Letting go of that idea that I needed to be normal or that I somehow wasn’t normal just because I needed to prioritize self-care to be healthy is the biggest gift I’ve ever given myself. Being normal is being completely unique, because nobody’s the same. Normal, honey? Who is she, anyway?” (p. 218)