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holly_keimig's review
4.0
Cecily Strong details her struggle to deal with the grief of losing her cousin Owen along with navigating a worldwide pandemic. This memoir is touching and definitely made me cry a couple of times. Her observations are heartfelt and comforting to anyone that has lost their own special family member.
rosalielol's review
2.0
It’s a very particular view of a very particular time.
Wasn’t super engaged but was on a plane so I finished it.
Wasn’t super engaged but was on a plane so I finished it.
reading_rainbow_with_chris's review
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
fast-paced
2.5
“This Will All Be Over Soon” by Cecily Strong
Cecily Strong lost her cousin Owen from cancer as the early nascent stages of Covid were creeping into the United States. These compounded circumstances, and other accumulations of tragedy, sparked Strong’s reflection on her process of grief and longing throughout this memoir.
I, unfortunately, am not here for this memoir. To be clear, this should be read as an invalidation of Strong’s journey of grief or the difficulties her family and friends went through. The memoir does capture how significant her personal experiences were during this time. However, when I read memoirs I am often ask some variation of the question: Does the author’s gaze ever leave their own navel? By which I mean, has the writer taken steps in their writing to build a bridge between their experiences and the public or are they so fascinated with their own self that their head stays down. Strong wrote this piece in a journal style (or converted her journal into the book), which means the reflections are often short, choppy, and focus so much on Strong’s “I” that I often felt the book wasn’t refined for an audience. Why did these reflections NEED to be made public? What is the exigency it responds to? The exigency, I could argue, is the collective tragedy of Covid-19, but Strong’s experience rarely bridges to this collective and feels unrelatable given her relative privilege. For example, she can just afford to escape the city during Covid, stay in an AirBnB, spend her time reflecting and grieving, all while still keeping her apartment for a year unoccupied. It’s a valid form of grief she is afforded through privilege, but relatable it is not. It is hard to identify with her narrative because, in a way, it almost feels like we were never intended to see it.
Personal tragedy is valid. Personal writing through tragedy is valid. I appreciate what Strong attempted here. But I still don’t see an answer to the question of why this NEEDED to be published for it to be an important part of Strong’s life.
kellyculpeppertowe's review against another edition
Like reading a teenage girls diary… or listening to a teenage girl read her diary.
rachel_smrt's review
This is a sad and tender book! And also a bracing return to the crazy and horrifying details I've started to forget from the beginning of the pandemic. Cecily Strong is open about being a super anxious person so when she recalls panicking that she could have gotten COVID from touching fruit in a store, I can't remember if I worried about that or not! And then I remember that I did, but then soon after that realized that I didn't need to, and then cycled through that loop repeatedly. This book is basically a diary; each section is dated and it all takes place over the course of Cecily's experience of the pandemic. She grieves her sweet cousin who died of cancer, she reflects on other losses, she goes through her own vulnerabilities and anxieties and ways that she pushes people away and feels disappointment. We don't learn much new stuff about her experience at SNL or really any of her career. Her writing is vulnerable but a bit flat at times, and sections are repetitive or sad without enough specificity. I really love her as a performer and think she's hilarious and warm on screen, and occasionally some of that came through, but it's really not a funny book. That's okay! She doesn't have to be funny all the time.
jannythelibrarian's review
memoir audiobook. thought it was going to be haha funny. nope. about grief, cousin's death, covid, more death, depression, anxiety, saddness, mental health, lessons learned. timeline jumps around. it really reads like she's processing her life in that moment so felt jumpy, raw, emotional, messy