bluestjuice 's review for:

Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography by David Javerbaum, Neil Patrick Harris

3.0

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I was anticipating this being a fun and frothy read, and it was that, but it also delved into the intimacy of NPH’s family life and more thorny questions like ‘how should a gay actor come out publicly?’ and ‘what does an awakening of sexual identity look like?’ The answers are not always as cut and dried as we expect them to be. The choose your own adventure format was a gimmick which alternately amused and annoyed me - it did lead me to wander through NPH’s life in a non-chronological fashion that was refreshing, and potentially more engaging than a straight through rendition would have been. Still, I found I missed large chunks randomly and had to go back again and again to fill them in. There are plenty of random tidbits, interviews, recipes, and magic tricks sprinkled throughout as well, and also some obvious nonsense as ballast. In short, I wouldn’t want to read a lot of books like this, but it worked as a one-off.