Review: Hooray For Me

Hooray For Me: A Foggy Memoir by Ello Black
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

[DISCLAIMER: I RECEIVED A COPY OF THIS FROM THE GOODREADS GIVEAWAYS IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW]

I *really* wanted to enjoy this book, because it sounded so funny and interesting. Unfortunately, it just didn't live up to expectations. I read the little introduction, explaining that the spelling and grammar wasn't going to be standard because it's just the way she writes, which is fine, but I couldn't really get past it.

This book is a series of vignettes about Ello Black's life. It was too short to have any depth to it, and none of the stories related to each other except for the fact that they all had at least something to do with her dad (some more than others). Yes it was funny, and yes the stories were biographical, but at some point there needs to be cohesion and that cohesion just never came.

It was also difficult to read because of the voice. It was as if she was speaking the book to me instead of writing it, but that's not really how I enjoy to read. Dialect is one thing, but there should have at least been some proofreading done to make it grammatically correct. I know that she said in the intro that she isn't grammatically correct and that's just the way it is, but there's only so much of it that I can take before I start getting out my red pen.

I wish this had been more of a cohesive story and less of separate essays on various parts of her life that, frankly, weren't all that extraordinary in the first place. The chapter on her father's death was certainly heartbreaking and the chapter in which she recounts being bullied struck a chord with me. But the rest felt like filler.

Ello, you seem like a cool person and I hope you keep on being your bad self. And thanks for the book. It just didn't do it for me.

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