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A review by squid_vicious
Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey
4.0
I got my hands on a copy of this book after seeing it featured on Heather O’Neill’s Instagram; I’d be lying if I said that the beautiful and messy cover illustration didn’t also help.
As I read this book, I chuckled at the familiarity of some aspects of Maggie’s story, and snorted in bafflement at other things she says and does, as she navigates her new reality as a 29 year old divorcée. I went through a major break up at that age, and it wrecks you, like any break up does, but the fact that your 30th birthday is around the corner adds a very specific sort of stress for women, even if you have spent most of your adult life railing against ageist stereotypes. It was a long time ago, but I do remember doing some pretty crazy shit, so I had a decent amount of compassion for Maggie.
Nevertheless, this book doesn’t really reinvent the wheel: it is funny, sometimes painfully familiar and often cringey as hell, but it’s about that cycle most adults go through of one relationship ending, the struggle to get one’s brain back on track, the often rocky healing process and the eventual realization that they’ll be OK. I don’t know if predictable is quite the right word for “Really Good, Actually”, but it does sound like a story you may have heard before.
I would have rated this book 3 stars, but one line caught my eye, and I felt it rather strongly as one of the most relatable thing I’d read in a while:
“I looked at my body in the mirror and thought, ‘you know what, fine’.”
For that bittersweet line alone, it got rounded up to 4 stars. Light, sweet, silly but not without it’s moments of truth.
As I read this book, I chuckled at the familiarity of some aspects of Maggie’s story, and snorted in bafflement at other things she says and does, as she navigates her new reality as a 29 year old divorcée. I went through a major break up at that age, and it wrecks you, like any break up does, but the fact that your 30th birthday is around the corner adds a very specific sort of stress for women, even if you have spent most of your adult life railing against ageist stereotypes. It was a long time ago, but I do remember doing some pretty crazy shit, so I had a decent amount of compassion for Maggie.
Nevertheless, this book doesn’t really reinvent the wheel: it is funny, sometimes painfully familiar and often cringey as hell, but it’s about that cycle most adults go through of one relationship ending, the struggle to get one’s brain back on track, the often rocky healing process and the eventual realization that they’ll be OK. I don’t know if predictable is quite the right word for “Really Good, Actually”, but it does sound like a story you may have heard before.
I would have rated this book 3 stars, but one line caught my eye, and I felt it rather strongly as one of the most relatable thing I’d read in a while:
“I looked at my body in the mirror and thought, ‘you know what, fine’.”
For that bittersweet line alone, it got rounded up to 4 stars. Light, sweet, silly but not without it’s moments of truth.