howdyhoward 's review for:

The Half of It by Madison Beer

3.0

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Yeah I got clickbaited. "Discovered at twelve years old, Madison Beer was one of the first artists to have her entire life documented online." This line in the description really pulled me in. I didn't/don't know who Madison Beer is and had never consciously listened to her music before today, but the premise of modern celebrities having their entire lives documented online intrigued me. I was hoping for something beyond surface level insights about how difficult and dangerous it is to grow up in a social media era. While Madison's experiences are on a bit of a higher scale than the average person, the advice she gave and feelings she shared are ones I've heard echoed before when discussing this very topic. The writing wasn't bad but it also didn't have any special qualities. The stories told were in basically chronological order but they felt disconnected, there wasn't a clear narrative tying the essays together. I felt that the essays relied on showing more than telling and the final essay leaves on the advice "everything happens for a reason". A very underwhelming memoir overall (especially since my expectations were definitely higher than they should have been).